es 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 pr