uld I more than roughly guess our latitude and
longitude. At a calculation of a two-mile drift per hour, during the
seventy and odd hours of the storm, we had been driven at least one
hundred and fifty miles to the north-east. But was such calculated drift
correct? For all I knew, it might have been four miles per hour instead
of two. In which case we were another hundred and fifty miles to the
bad.

Where we were I did not know, though there was quite a likelihood that we
were in the vicinity of the _Ghost_. There were seals about us, and I
was prepared to sight a sealing-schooner at any time. We did sight one,
in the afternoon, when the north-west breeze had sprung up freshly once
more. But the strange schooner lost itself on the sky-line and we alone
occupied the circle of the sea.

Came days of fog, when even Maud's spirit drooped and there were no merry
words upon her lips; days of calm, when we floated on the lonely
immensity of sea, oppressed by its greatness and yet marvelling at the
miracle of tiny life, for we still lived and struggled to live; days of
sleet and wind and snow-squalls, when nothing could keep us warm; or days
of drizzling rain, when we filled our water-breakers from the drip of the
wet sail.

And ever I loved Maud with an increasing love. She was so many-sided, so
many-mooded--"protean-mooded" I called her. But I called her this, and
other and dearer things, in my thoughts only. Though the declaration of
my love urged and trembled on my tongue a thousand times, I knew that it
was no time for such a declaration. If for no other reason, it was no
time, when one was protecting and trying to save a woman, to ask that
woman for her love. Delicate as was the situation, not alone in this but
in other ways, I flattered myself that I was able to deal delicately with
it; and also I flattered myself that by look or sign I gave no
advertisement of the love I felt for her. We were like good comrades,
and we grew better comrades as the days went by.

One thing about her which surprised me was her lack of timidity and fear.
The terrible sea, the frail boat, the storms, the suffering, the
strangeness and isolation of the situation,--all that should have
frightened a robust woman,--seemed to make no impression upon her who had
known life only in its most sheltered and consummately artificial
aspects, and who was herself all fire and dew and mist, sublimated
spirit, all that was soft and tender