Soon, however, I managed to distinguish outlines, and, with outstretched hands and wary legs, made my way to the cabin Captain Nielsen had indicated, and beat upon the door. There was no response. I beat again, listening, scarcely thinking, perhaps, that the girl would require a voice as keen as a boatswain's pipe to thread the soul-confounding and brain-muddling clamour in this after-deck of the storm-beaten barque. 'He bade me enter,' thought I, 'and enter I must if the girl is to be aroused;' and I turned the handle of the door and walked in. Helga lay, attired as she had left the deck, in an upper bunk, through the porthole of which the daylight, bright with the foam, came and went upon her face as the vessel at one moment buried the thick glass of the scuttle in the green blindness of the sea, and then lifted it weeping and gleaming into the air. Her head was pillowed on her arm; her hair in the weak light showed as though touched by a dull beam of the sun. Her eyes were sealed--their long lashes put a delicate shading under them; her white face wore a sweet expression of happy serenity, and I could believe that some glad vision was present to her. Her lips were parted in the expression of a smile. There was a feeling in me as of profanity in this intrusion, and of wrongdoing in the obligation forced upon me of waking her from a peaceful, pleasant, all-important repose to face the bitter hardships and necessities of that time of tempest. But for my single pair of arms the pump was too much, and she must be aroused. I lightly put my hand upon hers, and her smile was instantly more defined, as though my action were coincident with some phase of her dream. I pressed her hand; she sighed deeply, looked at me, and instantly sat up with a little frown of confusion. 'Your father begged me to enter and arouse you,' said I. 'I was unable to make you hear by knocking. I have sounded the well, and there is an increase of five inches.' 'Ah!' she exclaimed, and sprang lightly out of her bunk. In silence and with amazing despatch, seeing that a few seconds before she was in a deep sleep, she put on her sea-helmet, whipped a handkerchief round her neck, and was leading the way to the hatch on buoyant feet. On gaining the deck I discovered that the wrecked appearance of the ship aloft had been greatly heightened during my absence below by the foretopsail having been blown into rags. It was a single sail, and the few long strips of it which remained blowing out horizontally from the yards, stiff as crowbars, gave an indescribable character of forlornness to the fabric. Helga glanced aloft, and immediately perceived that the maintopgallant-mast had been wrecked, but said nothing, and in a minute the pair of us were hard at work.