Miss Otway lay almost lifeless. I shored her up on a couch by backs of chairs which I lashed; I heaped clothes from her bed on her, and got hot brandy for her, and encouraged her as best I could. There was nothing to be done on deck. The sea was flying in white sheets over the waist and forecastle; the glare of the brine breaking close aboard showed you the snow; but looking around was like staring into a well. It was a strange sort of snow, too, that fell. Once in the cabin I took notice of it on my coat: it was in small grains, round as shot, of a size from mustard seed to buckshot; a dry, pure white: not hail. But two hours after the gale began, the snow ceased and the wind lessened; I watched from the companion-way, and observed but little water flying athwart. With such observations I was forced to be satisfied, and spent the hours in the cabin, keeping an eye on the stove, boiling a hot drink now and again for the life and support of it, tending Miss Otway, from time to time peering through the hatch where the iron sweep of the wind seemed to unflesh the face, wondering, for ever wondering, whether the next hurl would be followed by a crash of the side, and how long we should be in perishing when the hull split. I should have in agined myself too anxious--nay, to put it plainly, too alarmed to sleep, and it seemed that I went up many times to take a look around; and still I must have slept, for I started from my chair in a sudden terror of dream or noise, and with a lurch of the hull fell upon my knees, but was up instantly. The motion of the craft had changed; the moment I had my wits I felt that the sea was pyramidal, which told me there had been a quite recent shift of wind. I cannot imagine anything more dislocating, more unnerving, more brain sickening, than the leaps and rolls of the hull upon the sea that, by the movement, I knew was darting in almost perpendicular thrusts, spear shaped billows lifting in ebon darts and daggers, and putting a frightful wildness into the flings of the fabric. Miss Otway lay with her eyes shut, and seemed asleep; a small fire glowed in the stove, and the lighted lantern swung in the centre of the cabin as though some invisible hand grasped it, seeking to jerk it off its hook. I took the bull's-eye and went on deck, and found the wind a dry gale, but observed a thickness as of fog in it, but it was too dark to make sure. I staggered to the binnacle and saw the wind was blowing out of north again: a cruel shift! I stared and smelt for ice, but saw no loom, and tasted no more than the freezing coldness of the blast. What was the hour? I went below and found it half-past eight o'clock. Oh! what an interminable darkness was that! Where was the ice? It could not be far off. What and whither was our drift? I felt like a madman then.