I was willing, indeed, to keep her at my side talking. The dread of the loneliness which I knew would come off the wide, dark sea into my brain when she was silent and asleep, and when there would be nothing but the stars and the cold and ghastly gleam of the ebony breast on which we lay, to look at, was strong upon me. I mastheaded the bull's-eye lamp, and spread the poor Danish Captain's cloak, and we seated ourselves upon it, and for a long two hours we talked together, in which time she gave me her life's history, and I chatted to her about myself. I listened to her with interest and admiration. Her voice was pure, with a quality of plaintive sweetness in it, and now and again she would utter a sentence in Danish, then translate it. It might be that the girlish nature I now found in her was accentuated to my appreciation by the memory of her boyish attire, by her appearance when on board the barque, the work she did there and the sort of roughness one associates with the trade of the sea, whether true of the individual or not; but, as I thought, never had I been in the company of any woman whose conversation and behaviour were so engaging, with their qualities of delicacy, purity, simplicity, and candour, as Helga's. It was such another night as had passed, saving that the ocean swell had the softness of the long hours of fine weather in its volume, whereas on the previous night it still breathed as in memory of the fierce conflict that was over. A little after midnight there was a red scar of moon in the west, and the hour was a very dark one, spite of the silver showering of the plentiful stars. I had made for Helga the best sort of couch it was in my power to manufacture, and at this time she lay upon it sleeping deeply, as I knew by the regularity of her respiration. The sense of loneliness I dreaded had been upon me since she lay down and left me to the solitary contemplation of our situation. A small wind blew out of the north-west, and there was much slopping noise of waters under my feet amid the crevices of the clumsily framed raft. I had promised Helga to call her at three, but without intending to keep my word if she slept, and I sat near her head, her pale face glimmering out of the darkness as though spectrally self-luminous, and for ever I was turning my eyes about the sea and directing my gaze at the little masthead lantern to know that it was burning.