The interpreter, Mr. Scammel, went upstairs, and she told him her story.  “Our vessel,” she said (I give it in brief) “was the Margit Pedersen, brig.  She belonged to me and was called after me.  We were bound for the Tagus with a cargo of salted fish which I had bought at Bergen from the Lofoden smacks—­fish for the Roman Catholics to eat in Lent.  Nils Pedersen, the captain, was my husband:  Knud Lote was mate.”  Mr. Scammell having expressed some surprise that so young a man should have been captain, she explained, “He was twenty-two.  I made him captain.  My father and mother died:  they had not wished me to marry him.  They were proud.  But they left very little money, considering; and with it I bought the brig and cargo.  She was an old craft, half rotten.  We had fair weather, mostly, down the English Channel and almost to Ushant.  There we met a strong southerly gale, and in the middle of it a pintle of our rudder gave way and the loose rudder damaged our stern-post.  We tried to bear up for Falmouth, but she would not steer; and we drove up towards the Irish Coast, just missing Scilly.  On the 8th the wind changed to N.W. and increased.  That night, as Nils tried to lay to, she carried away her fore-mast, which had been shaky for days.  She was now leaking fast.  At noon on the 9th we managed to launch a boat, and abandoned her.  She sank at four o’clock:  we saw her go down.  The weather grew colder, that night.  I think it snowed all the time:  and the seas were too heavy to let the boat run.  The men pulled to keep her nose to them and the wind, and so she drifted.  I forget when they gave over pulling.  For a night and a day I baled steadily.  After that I lay most of the time in the bottom of the boat.  Our food was almost done.  It was very cold.  That is all I can remember.”

And this, I think, was all we ever heard from her.  On his return to Penzance, Mr. Scammell sent me a Norwegian dictionary; and with the help of it Obed and I soon managed to talk a little with her, in a mixture of Norwegian and English.  But she never wanted to speak of the past, and fell silent whenever we spoke of it.  What astonished me more was that, though she told us the names of the dead men, she showed no further interest in them.  At first, knowing how weak she was, and fearing to distress her, I fought shy of the subject; but one day, towards the end of the third week—­she being strong enough to walk a moderate distance—­ I plucked up courage and asked if she cared to come with me to the churchyard.  She agreed, and that afternoon, after a heavy shower, we walked thither together.  I feared what effect the first sight of her husband’s grave might work on her feelings; and all the way kept wishing that we had omitted to set up the boat and mast.  But she looked at them calmly, and at the graves.  “That is good,” she said:  “you have done great kindness to them.  I will not come any more.”  And so she prepared to walk away.