My Shipmate Louise, Volume III

I sat as the sailors had left me at that table, lost in thought, bending all the energies of my mind to full realisation of my situation, that my judgment might soundly advise me. I daresay I remained thus for above twenty minutes as motionless as ever was the dead figure that we had met with in the deck-house of the wreck. Then slowly rising, I went to one of the cabin windows and stood mechanically staring at the piebald sky that would come with a sweep, as the vessel rolled to windward, to the throbbing line of the frothing horizon; and thus I continued, still thinking, weighing one consideration and then another, forming resolutions which the next effort of thought rendered helplessly idle, until I had arrived at a determination; when, starting from my deep and painful reverie, I descended into the steerage and knocked on Miss Temple's cabin door. She immediately opened it.

‘At last! ' she cried. ‘Oh, Mr. Dugdale, what have you to tell me now?'