I clawed my way to the side and looked over. The beach that held the berg to the main was perhaps a quarter of a mile long; I could not be sure; it went out of sight in a slope on the port hand. But, in comparison with the mighty bulk it yoked to the island, it was a slender tie indeed, to be snapped in any moment of storm as you'd break a clay pipe-stem. I peered down, wondering if the severance happened whether we should go with the berg or be left a-dry under the cliff as we now lay; but it was a hopeless and therefore a silly speculation; though all the same I prayed heartily whilst I stood staring about me that the berg would go, and speedily, whether it took us or left us, since, whilst we lay hidden by it, there was not the remotest chance, that I could imagine, of our being rescued. I remember thinking, as I turned from the rail and made with the ice in my hand towards the companion, that one of the hardest parts of this terrible experience for the poor girl below, though she would have to be dumb on the subject, was the prospect of being locked up with me--alone with a young man, a sailor, who was a stranger without existence to her a few days ago; to be locked up, I say, it might be for months, with a threat even of years in the run of time, with a person whose character and history she knew nothing about, whose calling sunk him far below her socially. This ran in my head with the swiftness of thought whilst I was going below, and after I was in the cabin going about the business of boiling coffee for a meal. How could I make her mind easy, on the score, I mean, of our association, so that something at least of the weight of our distressful tragic situation should be lifted off her poor young heart? But the answer my good sense gave me was the answer it had before returned, namely, she could only find me out by time, though to be sure I might shorten the period of her fear of me by a behaviour that could leave her in no doubt of my resolution to act as a man. I can't express how deeply I pitied her, how my very soul was moved to its depths by the sight of her as she sat in her loneliness and helplessness, a trueborn lady, gentle and fair, watching me, with her white face turning after me, as I moved; sitting upon that desperate slope of deck with the red glow of the fire upon her, herself a shapeless bulk of furs and coverings in the lamplight that was growing dim. When I drew to the stove she questioned me afresh upon our situation, and begged me to conduct her on deck. I answered presently, when she had broken her fast. She said: 'Only think how it would be with me if I were alone.' I stopped in what I was about, and looking at her a little steadily, but with a smile, I said: 'I'm glad my presence is welcome to you. It will be owing to no fault of mine if it's not always so whilst we're together.' A grateful look freshened her face with an expression of life that was like colour and a smile.