'The bad weather is gone!' she cried. 'It is still too bad for us, though,' said I. 'Does the wind blow from the land?' she asked. 'Ay! and freshly too.' She was now able to perceive the meaning in my face, and asked me anxiously if anything new had happened to alarm me. I answered by giving her the depth of water I had found in the hold. She clasped her hands and started to her feet, but sat again on my making a little gesture. 'Miss Nielsen,' said I, 'the barque is taking in water very much faster than we shall be able to pump it out. We may go on plying the pump, but the labour can only end in breaking our hearts and wasting precious time that might be employed to some purpose. We must look the truth in the face, and make up our minds to let the vessel go, and to do our best, with God's help, to preserve our lives.' 'What?' she asked in a low voice, that indicated awe rather than fear, and I noticed the little twitch and spasm of her mouth swiftly vanish in an expression of resolution. 'We must go to work,' said I, 'and construct a raft, then get everything in readiness to sway it overboard. The weather may enable us to do this. I pray so. It is our only hope, should nothing to help us come along.' 'But my father?' 'We shall have to get him out of his cabin on to the raft.' 'But how? But how?' she cried with an air of wildness. 'He cannot move!' 'If we are to be saved, he must be saved, at all events,' said I. 'What, then, can be done but to lower him in his cot, as he lies, on to the deck and so drag him to the gangway and sling him on to the raft by a tackle?' 'Yes,' she said, 'that can be done. It will have to be done.' She reflected, with her hands tightly locked upon her brow. 'How long do you think,' she asked, 'will the _Anine_ remain afloat if we leave the pumps untouched?' 'Your father will know,' said I. 'Let us go to him.' Captain Nielsen sat erect in his cot munching a biscuit. 'Ha!' he cried as we entered. 'We are to have pleasant weather. There was some sunshine upon that port just now. What says the barometer, Mr. Tregarthen?' then contracting his brows while he peered at his daughter as though he had not obtained a view of her before, he exclaimed, 'What is the matter, Helga? What have you come to tell me?' 'Father,' she answered, sinking her head a little and so looking at him through her eyelashes, 'Mr. Tregarthen believes, and I cannot doubt it, for there is the sounding-rod to tell the story, that water is fast entering the _Anine_, and that we must lose no time to prepare to leave her.' 'What!' he almost shrieked, letting fall his biscuit and grasping the edge of the cot with his emaciated hands, and turning his body to us from the waist, leaving his legs in their former posture as though he were paralyzed from the hip down. 'The _Anine_ sinking? prepare to leave her? Why, you have neglected the pump, then!'