with such horror (the darkness, the fierceness of the wind, the dreadful height of the waves, and the hurry the Dutch sailors were in, whose language I did not understand one word of, neither when they cursed or when they prayed); I say, all these things together filled me with terror, and, in short, I began to be very much frighted.
When I was come back into the great cabin, there sat Amy, who was very sea-sick, and I had a little before given her a sup of cordial waters to help her stomach. When Amy saw me come back and sit down without speaking, for so I did, she looked two or three times up at me; at last she came running to me. 'Dear madam', says she, 'what is the matter? What makes you look so pale? Why, you an't well; what is the matter?' I said nothing still, but held up my hands two or three times. Amy doubled her importunities; upon that I said no more but, 'Step to the steerage-door, and look out, as I did'; so she went away immediately, and looked too, as I had bidden her; but the poor girl came back again in the greatest amazement and horror that ever I saw any poor creature in, wringing her hands and crying out she was undone! she was undone! she should be drowned! they were all lost! Thus she ran about the cabin like a mad thing, and as perfectly out of her senses as any one in such a case could be supposed to be. I was frighted myself, but when I saw the girl in such a terrible agony, it brought me a little to myself, and I began to talk to her, and put her in a little hope. I told her there was many a ship in a storm that was not cast away, and I hoped we should not be drowned; that it was true the storm was very dreadful, but I did not see that the seamen were so much concerned as we were. And so I talked to her as well as I could, though my heart was full enough of it, as well as Amy's; and death began to stare in my face; ay, and something else too—that is to say, conscience, and my mind was very much disturbed; but I had nobody to comfort me.
But Amy being in so much worse a condition that is to say, so much more terrified at the storm than I was—I had something to do to comfort her. She was, as I have said, like one distracted, and went raving about the cabin, crying out she was undone! undone! she should be drowned! and the like. And at last, the ship giving a jerk, by the force, I suppose, of some violent wave, it threw poor Amy quite down, for she was weak enough before with being sea-sick, and as it threw her forward, the poor girl struck her head against the bulk-head, as the seamen call it of the cabin, and laid her as dead as a stone upon the floor or deck; that is to say, she was so to all appearance.
I cried out for help, but it had been all one to have cried out on the top of a mountain where nobody had been within five miles of me, for the seamen were so engaged and made so much noise that nobody heard me or came near me. I opened the great cabin door, and looked into the steerage to cry for help, but there, to increase my fright, was two seamen on their knees at prayers, and only one man who steered, and he made a groaning noise too, which I took to be saying his prayers, but it seems it was answering to those above, when they called to him to tell him which way to steer.
Here was no help for me, or for poor Amy, and there she lay still so, and in such a condition, that I did not know whether she was dead or alive. In this fright I went to her, and lifted her a little way up, setting her on the deck, with her back to the boards of the bulk-head; and I got
