Never was there so long a night. The moon was behind the sea, and after she was gone the very march of the stars seemed arrested, as though nature had cried 'Halt!' to the universe. Having run the lamp aloft, I resolved to leave it there, possessed now with such a superstitious notion as might well influence a shipwrecked man, that if I lowered it again no vessel would appear. Therefore, to tell the time, I was obliged to strike a match, and whenever I did this I would stare at my watch and put it to my ear and doubt the evidence of my sight, so inexpressibly slow was the passage of those hours. Helga's sobs ceased. She sat by my side, speaking seldom after we had exhausted our first talk on her coming round to where I was. I wished her to sleep, and told her that I could easily make a couch for her, and that my oilskin would protect her from the dew. I still held her hand as I said this, and I felt the shudder that ran through her when she replied that she could not lie down, that she could not sleep. Perhaps she feared I would disturb her father's body to make a bed for her; and, indeed, there was nothing on the raft, but the poor fellow's cloak and his pillows and blankets, out of which I could have manufactured a bed. Had I been sure that he was dead, I should have slipped the body overboard while it remained dark, so that Helga should not have been able to see what I did; but I had not the courage to bury him merely because I believed he was dead, because he lay there motionless; and I was constantly thinking how I should manage when the dawn came--how I was so to deal with the body as to shock and pain poor Helga as little as possible. As we sat side by side, I felt a small pressure of her shoulder against my arm, and supposed that she had fallen asleep, but, on my whispering, she immediately answered. Dead tired I knew the brave girl must be, but sleep could not visit eyes whose gaze I might readily guess was again and again directed at the faint pale figure of the cot. The light air shifted into the north-west at about three o'clock in the morning, and blew a small breeze which extinguished the star-flakes that here and there rode upon the swell, and raised a noise of tinkling, rippling waters along the sides of the raft. I guessed this new direction of the wind by my observation of a bright greenish star which had hung in the wake of the moon, and was now low in the west. This light breeze kindled a little hope in me, and I would rise again and again to peer into the quarter whence it blew, in the expectation of spying some pale shadow of ship. Once Helga, giving a start, exclaimed: 'Hush! I seem to hear the throb of a steamer's engines!'