It was idle to reason with him. He was clothed as I had found him when I had first seen him--in a waistcoat and serge coat, and a shawl round his neck; but he was without a hat--a thing to be overlooked at such a time as this--and the lower part of him was protected only by the blankets he lay under. There was still time to supply his requirements. I had noticed his wideawake and a long cloak hanging in his berth, and I immediately sprang on board, rushed aft, procured them and returned. Helga was still below. I put the hat on the Captain's head and clasped the cloak over his shoulders, fretting over the girl's absence, for every minute was communicating a deadlier significance to the languid, sickly, dying motions of the fast-drowning hull. I think about ten minutes had passed since she left the barque's side to go to her cabin, when, bringing my eyes away from the sea, into whose eastern quarter I had been gazing with some wild hope or fancy in me of a sail down there--though it proved no more than a feather-tip of cloud--I saw Helga in the gangway. I say Helga, but for some moments I did not know her. I started and stared as if she had been a ghost. Instead of the boyish figure to which my sight was already used, there stood in the aperture betwixt the bulwarks, which we call the gangway, a girl who looked at least half a head taller than the Helga who had been my associate. I might have guessed at once that this appearance of stature in her was due to her gown, but, as I did not suspect that she had gone to change her dress, her suggestion of increased height completed the astonishment and perplexity with which I regarded her. She stood on the leaning and swaying side of the barque, as perfect a figure of a maiden as mortal eyes could wish to rest on. Her dress was of a dark-blue serge that clung to her: she also wore a cloth jacket, thinly edged about the neck and where it buttoned with fur, and upon her head was a turban-shaped hat of sealskin, the dark glossy shade of which brightened her short hair into a complexion of the palest gold. She held a parcel in her hand, and called to me to take it from her. I did so, and cried: 'You will not be able to jump from the gangway. Get into the fore-chains, and I will endeavour to haul the raft up to you.' But even as I spoke she grasped her dress, and disclosed her little feet, and with a bound gained the raft as it rose with the swell, yielding on her knees as she struck the platform with the grace that nothing but the teaching of old ocean could have communicated to her limbs. 'Thank God you are here!' I cried, catching her by the hand. 'I was growing uneasy--in another minute I should have sought you.' She faintly smiled, and then turned eagerly to her father. 'I have my mother's portrait,' said she, pointing to the parcel, 'and her Bible. I would not bring away more. If we are to perish, they will go with us.'