'I'll see to it. That blow was weak. We have been thrust high. Feel what a desperate slope it is. I pray God no sudden shock of sea may launch us afresh.' With that I crawled to the companion steps, every bone aching like rheumatism with the contortions of my figure in my efforts to move. CHAPTER XVIII IMPRISONED I might have guessed there would be no more to see now than when I had first looked. I stood in the companion with my head just out, holding the door as close shut as it would lie with my body in the way; and hardly had I put my head through when a whole green sheet of water tumbled over the port bulwarks and roared in a cataractal deluge down the steep, boiling white, through the wreckage of smashed bulwarks. I ducked, but not in time to stop a rush into the cabin. I guessed, by the uncommon blackness, that we were in a hollow betwixt high cliffs; I beheld an illusive paleness, the vague, spectral faintness of rocks of ice or snow-covered acclivities on either hand, but no features of them were in the least degree discernible. I durst not let go of the companion to look over the side, but I judged by the deep, hollow noise overhead that a strong gale still blew, and from a distance came the strong, coarse seething of a high sea. Still, the beat of the swell against the hull was not often now, which made me suspect it was no iceberg we had stranded on but land, one of the New Orkneys or South Shetlands group, because the bating of the swell told that a tide ran, and I had read in that book about the South Atlantic in the cabin that the rise and fall of the tide down here was very considerable, that gales of wind often swelled the water high above its natural level, as was shown by the many skeletons of whales found lying twenty or thirty feet above high-water mark. But until the dawn broke nothing could be imagined; I closed the companion door and crawled back to where Miss Otway sat. She was so postured by the angle of the deck that she could not get out of her chair; she begged me to help her; I drew her out and held her until she had sunk upon the floor, and then I sat down beside her on the hard plank, the carpet having been rolled up and stowed away when the cabin was flooded in the outfly that had dismasted the 'Lady Emma.' Not so much water as I supposed had tumbled down; it lay the length of the cabin wall and was fast draining off. 'Have you been able to see where we are?' she exclaimed. 'No. But though there's no doubt we've beached on ice, I believe the land's close aboard.' 'What land?' 'Coronation Island, if any. That was the island in the way of our drift; we've been making a straight course for it.' We paused to hearken to a heavy flooding of water overhead, but the blow that had sheeted the brine over the hull was as weak as a summer ripple is to an angry surge compared with the thumps which had driven us to where we now lay. 'The sea will have made a clean sweep of the decks,' said she.