I found myself smiling at the motherly tenderness conveyed in the tone of her voice. I longed to have a clear view of her, for it was still like talking in a pitch-dark room; the binnacle-lamp needed trimming, its light was feeble, and the sky lay horribly black over the ocean, that was raging, ghastly with pallid glances of sheets of foam under it. 'Let us first sound the well, if possible,' said I, 'for our lives' sake we ought to find out what is happening below!' By this time we had watched and waited long enough to satisfy ourselves that the barque would do as well as we dared hope with her helm lashed; and it also happened, very fortunately, that her yards were in the right trim for the posture in which she lay, having been pointed to the wind--the fore-yards on one tack, the main-yards on the other--when the gale came on to blow in the bay, and the braces had not since been touched. I walked with the girl to the entrance of the deck-house, the door of which faced forwards. She entered the structure and, while I waited outside, lighted a bull's-eye lamp, with which she rejoined me, and together we went forward to another house built abaft of the galley. This had been the place in which the crew slept. The carpenter's chest was here, and also the sounding-rod. We then went to the pumps, and while I held the lamp she dropped the rod down the sounding-pipe, drew it up and brought it to the light and examined it, and named the depth of water there was in the hold. I do not recollect the figure, but I remember that, though it was significant, there was nothing greatly to alarm us in it, seeing how heavily and how frequently the barque had been flooded with the seas, and how much of the water might have made its way from above. I recount this little passage in a few lines, yet it forms one of the most sharp-cut of the memories of my adventure. The picture is before me as I write. I see the pair of us as we come to a dead stand, grasping each other for support, while the vessel rolls madly over on the slope of some huge hurtling sea. I see the bright glare from the bull's-eye lamp in the girl's hand, dancing like a will-o'-the-wisp upon the black flood betwixt the rails washing with the slant of the decks to our knees; I see her dropping the rod down the tube, coolly examining it, declaring its indication, while, to the flash of the lamplight, I catch an instant's glimpse of her face, shining out white--large-eyed, as it seemed to me--upon the blackness rushing in thunder athwart the deck.