'I have been in ships,' said he, 'that always managed best when left alone in hard weather of this kind. There was the old _Dannebrog_,' he went on, with his eyes seeming to glisten to some sudden stir of happy memory in him. 'Twice when I was in her--once in the Baltic, once in the South Atlantic--we met with gales: well, perhaps not such a gale as this; but it blew very fiercely, Mr. Tregarthen. The captain, my old friend Sorensen, knew her as he knew his wife. He pointed the yards, lashed the helm, sent the crew below and waited, smoking his pipe in the cabin, till the weather broke. She climbed the seas dryly, and no whale could have made better weather of it. A ship has an intelligence of her own. It is the spirit of the sea that comes into her, as into the birds or fish of the ocean. Observe how long a vessel will wash about after her crew have abandoned her. They might have sunk her had they stayed, not understanding her. Much must be left to chance at sea, Helga. No; there is nothing to be done. Damm reported the hatch-covers on and everything secure while in the bay. It is so still, of course. Yet it will ease my mind to know she is a little freed of the water in her.' 'I am ready!' cried I. 'Is the pump too heavy for my arms alone? I cannot bear to think of your daughter toiling upon that wet and howling deck.' 'She will not spare herself, though you should wish it,' said her father. 'What is the hour, my dear?' She looked at her watch. 'Twenty minutes after two.' 'A weary long time yet to wait for the dawn!' said he. 'And it is Sunday morning--a day of rest for all the world save for the mariner. But it is God's own day, and when next Sabbath comes round we may be worshipping Him ashore, and thanking Him for our preservation.' As he pronounced these words, Helga, as I will henceforth call her, giving me a glance of invitation, quitted the berth, and I followed her into the cabin, as I may term the interior of the deck-house. She picked up the bull's-eye lamp and trimmed the mesh of it, and, arming herself with the sounding-rod, stepped on to the deck. I watched her movements with astonishment and admiration. I should have believed that I possessed fairly good sea-legs, even for a wilder play of plank than this which was now tossing us; nevertheless, I never dared let go with my hands, and there were moments when the upheaval was so swift, the fall so sickening, that my brain reeled again, and to have saved my life I could not have stirred the distance of a pace until the sensation had passed. But excepting an occasional pause, an infrequent grasp at what was next to her during some unusually heavy roll, Helga moved with almost the same sort of ease that must have been visible in her on a level floor. Her figure, indeed, seemed to float; it swayed to the rolling of the deck as a flame hovers upright upon the candle you sharply sway under it.