I thanked him, adding, however, that I could not be more satisfied than I was. And so, after some further conversation, we quitted the captain's private room.
I might have supposed this discovery of the body not being Marie—and I was as convinced of it as though I positively knew she was alive—would have comforted me, helped something towards the cheering of my spirits; instead, I seemed in my heart as much depressed as if the portrait of the dead girl had been hers. This was because, had I known she was dead, the worst would have been reached. But now I was to make a weary journey to the Cape to no imaginable purpose. I was to linger there till a returning steamer sailed, then measure all these leagues of water afresh, to arrive home as ignorant of her fate as though I had never set foot out of London.
During the rest of the passage, which was absolutely uneventful, I held much aloof from the people; I was too low-spirited to join in their conversation and amusements; I begged the captain and Mr. Hoskins to allow my trouble to remain their secret, and they very faithfully obliged me. Captain Strutt would often pace the deck for half an hour at my side, and in such quiet walks our talk nearly always concerned the 'Lady Emma.' He by no means gave me the encouragement I had got from old Robson; he told me honestly that it was as likely as not the three had been taken off the wreck, but advised me not to hope too much in that way after I returned to England, 'because,' said he, 'the news of such a rescue is bound to come to hand soon; things are not as they were forty years ago; you have the telegraph and the steamer and the newspaper. They were wrecked in July,' said he. 'If it was my business, I'd allow eight months, then, hearing nothing, I'd give them up.'
He flatly differed from old Robson's notion of the comparative safety of a dismasted hull amongst icebergs. 'How,' he exclaimed, in a grave wondering voice, 'could any sailorman talk such stuff? It's like his prejudice against the North Pole. What's to hinder a dismasted vessel from being flung against ice, and hammered to pieces? I don't talk to dispirit you, sir, but my reasoning is, if a loss must be a loss, then for God's sake let it be made and have done.'
The 'Cambrian' entered Table Bay, December 13. It was early in the morning, but the sun was already high, and when I went on deck and looked around me, I beheld as flashing and noble a scene of blue water and mountain as this earth has to show. The atmosphere was brimful of white and even splendour, so that the azure of the sky looked cold in it. Wonderful to my eyes was the sight of a gale of wind so local in its fury that freshing confines of the torn water, curved like a line of beach, this side being smooth and glittering, softly fanned with a little air out of the west, where the white light was so lustrous that the leaning sails of the Malay boats flickered in it with a look of frosted silver.
Afar, and marvellously clear cut in their hundred miles of distance, loomed a range of lofty mountains; the fierce wind was blowing out of a glorious white mist which veiled, with falling and ascending draperies of vapour, the greater bulk of the tawny mass on the right; but so marvellously brilliant was the atmosphere through which the gale was rushing, the sense of distance vanished, the huge steep lifting and disappearing in its splendour of mist, drew close, I saw the curves of the cloofs, every wrinkle of broken rock, and patches of the bush, though it was all miles off and high in air. The white houses spread like toys of ivory to the base; and the wide waters of the bay, full of the gleam of the brushing westerly air, and rushing in froth under the shriek and lash of the gale, where the breast of blue rounded to the town, were framed by a sparkling snow-white beach, past which the swelling country showed in reds and greens till the sight died upon the phantom blue of distant heights.
There were no docks in those days, nor can I recollect that they had begun to build the breakwater. We brought up in the splendid weather outside the thrashing storm, but it seemed we were to be kept aboard till the south-easter had blown itself out. Many ships, a few very large and fine, lay straining at their anchors, some within and some without that spray-white sheet of foul weather. I stood at the rail looking at a little barque which lay within easy hail of the voice; Mr. Baynton, chief officer of the 'Cambrian' approached to look at a boat that lay close under alongside. But his seaman's eye went quickly to the barque, and turning to me, he said:
'That's what they call a spouter.'
'A whaler?'
'Yes. She looks it, sir. See the boats at her cranes. What sort of daylight filters through those greasy grimy scuttles in her side, I wonder? She is an American, and draws decently; three years out by the looks of her, fresh from parts where its always too hot or always too cold, and with how many barrels aboard, ha! It's said no seaman thinks anything of a man as a sailor who's learnt his trade in a greaser. For my part I look upon 'em with respect and admiration. What Jack of us all sees the like of their seafaring? Let alone the weather, and that touches the extremes. What magnificent work in boats! what nerve and determination! To think of one of those egg-shells,' said he, nodding at the boats at the whaler's cranes, 'being in tow of a rushing mountain of stinking black flesh, shooting blood and brine sky high, every thrash of the tail a Niagara drench of rearing white water—ha!'
He sucked in his cheeks, blew them out again in a low whistle of admiration, and walked off.
I did not land till four o'clock in the afternoon. Mr. Hoskins, when we parted, put his card into my hand, with an address at Cape Town upon it, and begged me to let him know the house I put up at, that he might communicate in case I should think proper to confirm the revelation of the photographs by an inspection of the remains.
I was advised against the two or three bad hotels in Cape Town, and whilst in the ship had obtained the address of a boarding-house. It was a comfortable big Dutch-built house, low, without chimneys; it stood in a garden full of moon-lilies, and many lovely flowers, the fairest of them scentless. Here I found a colonel from India for his health, a Dutch couple, and one or two others. From the stoep of this house you saw the grand mass of Table Mountain, seemingly close to; the shadow of its noble bulk seemed to fill the heavens and swell with sensible, usurping presence into the far reaches of the country. I had travelled in mountainous parts in Europe, but never before witnessed such a tyrannous domination as this. The colossal ramparts caught up the whole prospect whilst you looked in a swinging sweep of their length, till 'twas all mountain with the steam-like vapour shredding away from the boiling whiteness atop, and the houses clustering into the base like things of life shuddering back into the giant refuge.
Such were the fantastic notions I got of the thing as I sat, cigar in mouth, on the stoep of the boarding-house on the first night of my arrival. The full moon was shining over the bay. I saw through the trees a space of the silvered waters, with the black figures and lines of ships anchored in the trembling glow, spotting it with their riding lights. The breeze was falling in sighs down the steep and troubling the vegetation into the shedding of some perfume upon the night air; the tinkling of the crickets spread low, like a noise of fairy bells, over the land, surging up in the warm, damp breeze and dying. I heard a band of music in the distance, but the mountain shone upon by the moon and now radiant at the summit with snow-white mist, looked the tranquility of its great face into the night, and the peace of its sublime silence dwelt like a spirit everywhere, to the very height of the stars, down to the waters trembling under the moon.
This rest was grateful and exquisitely refreshing after the ceaseless motions of the ship and the senseless chatter of the engine-room. And yet, though I was but just arrived, I now, after my first meal ashore for many days, sat alone, considering what I should do.
I had learnt at table there were ships in the bay homeward bound, also I was aware and had been long aware that I must wait a month for the next Union steamer to England. I could not, however, bring myself to endure the prospect of sailing home. The voyage by steam had already proved unendurably long; and now I might take shipping under a topsail, make a passage of two months to the line, lie in a month-long trance upon the burnished swathes of the molten silver swell of the Doldrums, then wish myself dead in six weeks of tempest to the Scillies, with a long flounder up Channel to round off all.
Therefore, on this the first night of my arrival at Cape Town, I resolved to return by steam, taking anything in that way which might come from the Indies, or, failing that, then the monthly Union steamer.
The colonel came out of the house with a long cheroot in his mouth, and sat down by my side. He was a man with bland manners, and a sarcastic voice. He talked contemptuously of Cape Town and its people, and cursed the indisposition that had driven him into such a barbarous hole, where you were distempered by bad cooks, poisoned by dreadful smells, maddened by the horns of the coloured costermongers. I was in no temper to hear him and was glad when he got up and strolled off.
Here was I, thousands of miles from home—for what purpose? I was no nearer to Marie! Would she ever be heard of? Was she alive? I looked up at the full moon and asked of God if its splendour rested anywhere upon her.
But then—but then—and my heart ached again as I reflected; it was in July that her ship was dismasted and last heard of, and this was December, almost the middle of it—five whole months! And the hard part was that I should have to live through another interminable period of expectation before reaching home, where alone I must hope to get news. Why, even whilst I sat there, with the two Atlantics between England and me, she might have arrived, or they might have got news that she was coming, and thus was I sure to go on thinking and hoping until I returned—when they would tell me they had heard nothing!
My thoughts went but seldom and lightly to the body of the girl who was resting in her grave somewhere past those trees yonder. She was not Marie. I'd look upon her if the coffin was lifted and Hoskins invited me; but she was not Marie! The wonder and pity of her to my mind now that I had seen the photographs lay in the coincidence of her discovery, and in the ghastly vision of her floating figure—so young and fair as she had been—a fancy of ocean loneliness I could somehow realise better here than at sea, maybe because of the height the lofty shadow of the mountain sent the stars to, its blotting presence widening the scene of heaven by exciting imagination of the magnitude of the hidden slope going over and past it to Agulhas and to where the ice was.
After this, for two or three days, I went about alone, struggling with a mood of depression that discoloured everything I beheld. It robbed all grace of freshness from the beauty and the splendour of the sights which lay about me. My favourite haunt was the waterside, where I'd stand watching the Atlantic comber form, huge and polished, out of the silken swell, arching and rushing onwards in a sparkling bravery of foam and sunlight; but my thoughts were always with Marie, and again and again I'd catch myself sighing as I brought my eyes away from the remote blue distance pass Robben Island.
It was on the fourth day of my arrival, in the afternoon, that strolling slowly under the shade of an umbrella from that part of the waterside close to where the docks now are, I met the colonel who lodged with me in the boarding-house. He turned from gazing at the bay under the sharp of his hand, and approached me.
'Were you ever aboard a whaler?' he asked.
'Never,' I answered.
'That ship yonder's a whaler,' said he pointing.
'Yes, I know,' I replied. 'I had a good look at her from the side of the steamer—we lay within a biscuit-toss.'
'I went aboard of her this morning,' said he, causing me to stop by halting and looking towards the vessel as though he would have me observe her whilst he talked. 'She is well worth a visit. Half of her crew are Kanakas, and the remainder Yankees, and a wild, queer, hairy lot they are. The captain's a Quaker, a strange, tall, formal fellow, buttoned up, lean and yellow, and thee's and thou's you; most unlike a seaman of any I ever saw. He was very civil though, mighty communicative. I sat an hour in his little cabin and 'twas as good as going awhaling to hear him. Such an array of harpoons and lances, decks dark with the mess of blubber boiling—'trying out' the captain called it. If you want to agreeably pass an hour and forget that you're in a land of smells and noise, visit her.'
I answered it was probable I would do so.
'Not that she's a nosegay,' said he, with a short, sarcastic laugh, 'but there's nothing Malay in the odour, nothing Dutch. The captain related an odd incident that happened whilst he was off the Horn, a bit south of it I think.'
Here he stepped out and I strolled by his side, pricking my ears, for there was a magic in the name of Cape Horn that never failed to arrest my attention.
'She'd been fishing in the South Seas and finding no quarry was coming into this ocean. She was running before a strong gale of wind off—I forget the name of the island; it lies south of the Horn. The land, coated with ice, stretched along their starboard beam; the captain had no notion he was so close in. He was looking at the land through his telescope when, in a sudden flaw that thinned the weather out into a momentary brilliance, he caught sight of a large dismasted ship upright on her keel upon a huge projection of ice that fell sheer to the wash of the surf. He reckons the height of cliff on which that hull was poised about thirty feet. How devilish odd! You can figure ships in many situations, but how in ghosts are they going to cradle themselves on an elevation of thirty or forty feet?'
When he said this I stopped dead; a fancy then, at that instant, flashed into me in pang after pang as though every drop of blood in my veins was living fire. It brought me to a stand just as if I had been paralysed, or struck by lightning.
Presently looking at him and rather gasping than speaking, I said:
'A dismasted ship, was it? On an island south of the Horn, did he say? Why, my God, I wonder—I wonder——'
'What's the matter? What's there in this to—— I hope I—— Catch hold of my arm!' exclaimed the colonel, staring at me with astonishment. 'What's it—sunstroke? Not under your umbrella?'
And he directed his aquiline nose and keen blue eyes right up into the sky; then put his arm through mine, and we walked slowly, he meanwhile surveying me askant with every mark of amazement.
After going a little way, during which I thought I should be unable to command my tongue or collect my wits, so heart-staggering had been that leap of fancy in me, I said:
'You have given me an extraordinary piece of news. I am deeply interested in a ship that was abandoned in a dismasted state in the neighbourhood of the Horn.'
'By gad! then,' said he, halting me with a violent, nervous pull at my arm, 'you had better go aboard and get a description at first hand, for the whaler's here to refresh only; she's been in the bay a fortnight and sails to-morrow.'
Without exchanging a word I walked, almost ran, to the waterside.
A number of boats lay rippling close in to the beach. A couple of Malay or Africander boatmen seeing me coming jumped into one of the little craft, and in a few minutes I was being rowed in the direction of the whaler.
It was about half-past four o'clock in the afternoon; the light of the high South African midsummer sun fell on the water in a blaze that made one think of a sky-wide bolt of flame; the scorching heat steamed to the face off the surface in tingling red-hot needles; there was not a breath of air; along the polished surface, breathing with the swell of the sea, slipped the small thunder of the distant surf. We drew close to the whaler and I read her name upon her counter 'Sea Queen, Nantucket.' Her sides were blistered and honeycombed with heat and conflict; her cabin scuttles or windows, in a row of three above her green sheathing, stared in their dirt blearedly across the water, like the eyes of a blind man; a number of seamen of several dyes of complexion and queerly attired overhung the bulwark rails.
She was a little ship of about four hundred tons and looked to be dropping to pieces with use, so deeply was she seamed, so ill were her masts stayed, so rusty and pale was her rigging, so worn and ragged the complexion and suggestion of the canvas heaped clumsily and negligently bound. When the boat was alongside I looked up at a copper-coloured face covered with black prickles of hair, and asked if the captain was aboard.
'Ay,' was the answer.
'I wish to see him on very particular business,' said I.
The man stared stupidly and lounged off.
'You gittee on board, boss,' said one of the boatmen. 'You hab welcome allee same as other gents,'
I took the man's advice, and putting my foot on to the shelf or projection of main channels, sprang and gained the deck in a jump from the bulwark rail.
There were probably twenty men lounging forward in every imaginable posture, smoking and talking; they were black and yellow and some were of the white man's bronze, long-haired, beards goat-shaped, the figure of them striking, with grass hats, dungaree trousers, brown shanks, and shirts of several dyes exposing their furry breasts. They took no notice of me whatever. The decks were dark with dirt: insufferably heaped up with caboose, boats, casks, pumps, and some midship arrangement for boiling blubber. A smell of greese hung cold and nasty in the atmosphere.
I faced aft, and was moving that way when a tall figure rose through the deck from under a sort of wooden hood which yawned at the wheel. I instantly guessed him the captain by the colonel's description; he was lean and hollow, with high cheek bones and a clean shaven face, yellow as any of his men forward, buttoned up in an old frock coat, and he wore a grey wideawake, the brim turned down. His eye came to me without any expression of interest; I judged by his manner his ship had been much visited.
I went straight up to him, and lifting my cap asked him if he was the master of this barque.
'I am,' he replied, with the usual American drawl.
'I have come off,' said I, 'to speak with you on a matter of the deepest interest to myself. I just now met a gentleman who told me that south of the Horn you sighted a large hull, high and dry upon the ice. Last July a ship named the "Lady Emma" was dismasted and abandoned by her crew who left three people aboard: the men quitted her much about the spot where you sighted the wreck. One of the people remaining in her was Captain Burke, her commander; the others were his wife and a young lady named Miss Otway. I was engaged to be married to that young lady, sir, and came here, having arrived from England on the thirteenth, believing that a body which had been found at sea and brought to Cape Town was Miss Otway's. It is not so. The remains are not hers. God knows but that, if the hull you sighted be the "Lady Emma," the three may be living—aboard—in a hopeless state! Will you tell me all you can recollect of her appearance and situation?'
In speaking I had insensibly worked myself up, and ended with my voice broken by agitation. He looked me steadily in the face, and when I had ended, after a minute's silence, said:
'Friend, follow me into the cabin, and I'll tell thee all I know.'
He led me down a narrow staircase with a little brown, gloomy interior, whose equipment, glorious as was the day outside, was barely revealed by the light that struggled through the frame of dirty glass overhead. The shaft of mizzenmast pierced the deck and was ringed by a number of polished harpoons which glanced in the gloom with the blue gleam of the razor. A squab square table was set in the midst of this cabin, and on either hand it was a locker, rugged and jagged, as though generations of whalemen had cut up plug tobacco upon the lid.
The captain told me to sit down, and with a stride or two of his long legs vanished inside a small berth abaft the mizzenmast. He reappeared, holding a volume which proved to be his log-book: this he placed upon the table and sat down in front of it.
'What might thy name be?' he asked whilst he turned the leaves of the book.
'Mr. Moore,' I answered.
He fastened his eyes on the page, and after reading awhile, said:
'We sighted the ship on the ice on the morning of October 13. It had been blowing a hard gale all through the night, but it slackened down airly in the morning and we put her before it; but so high a sea was running that had I seen that thar hull full of men I could have done nothing for them.' He ran his finger along the page and continued: 'The latitude in which that wreck lies is 60° and the longitude—I'm giving it thee by thy Greenwich time—will be 45° 28´ W.'
I pulled out my note-book and entered these figures.
'Though,' he went on, 'she looks to be lying on ice, it's land that cradles her. It's what's marked down as Coronation Island, and's the westermost of the South Orkneys. She lies plain in sight of the sea, onless the ice since then has come together and blocked her out.'
'Did you get a good view of her?'
'Ho, yes; I had her clear for ten minutes, watching for smoke for a signal; and I then gave the glass to the mate, who likewise looked till the run of the land hid her.'
'Will you describe her as you remember her?'
'Ho, yes. She was black, a lump of a ship she looked; wal, I daresay all seven hundred tons. What was the burthen of thy vessel, Mr. Moore?'
'Six hundred,' I answered.
'Ho, wal, we was a good ways off, and that thar hull might as wal be six as seven hundred tons.'
'Was she clean dismasted?'
'Clean?—wal, my mate arterwards said there was a stump of foremast standing. I didn't observe it.'
'But it must be the ship—the "Lady Emma" herself!' I cried, almost shouting in my excitement. 'When her masts went over the side, twelve feet of the foremast remained.'
He nodded gravely; but his long, hollow, yellow face reflected nothing of my emotion, no more than had he been a sheep.
'Did you see nothing whatever to hint at there being life on board?' I exclaimed.
'Nothin',' he answered; 'she hung betwixt thirty and forty foot high above the wash of the sea, on a big ledge of ice, with the white cliffs going up behind her. Haow she so perched herself beats all my going a-fishing; onless the ice jerked her up into it, for when them bergs are took with convulsions their tricks are queerer than their shapes by su'thin', and that's a fact.'
'You saw nothing to hint at life on board?' I repeated.
He shook his head with solemn emphasis.
'Your mate saw nothing?'
Again he wagged his head.
'Captain, tell me—you are an old hand—could people support life in that craft as she lies there, supposing her to have been stranded since July last?'
'No, I reckon.'
'But would not the people on seeing your ship pass have made a smoke, have shown some signal, that you could report life as helpless there since you could not rescue it?'
'Wal,' he answered, 'supposing folks aboard, thee's not to reckon they'd be always keeping a look-out. It's mighty cold down thar, an' they'll be mostly sitting under hatches, an' if they've been thar since July, as thee says, they'll have growed a little tired, I guess, by this here time of watching for su'thin' to happen.'
'Is she accessible?'
'Haow?'
'Is she to be got at by the people of a ship sighting her, or sent to her?'
'There was a mighty biling of water all along under where she was,' he answered. 'Thee'd need a quiet day; but quiet days are to be had, bar the swell. Folks have landed afore and they'll land again. Ho, yes! If thy friends are locked up in that thar hull, they're to be got out of her.'
'Suppose her there since July; will you believe she has been boarded and the people released?'
'Why,' he answered, 'if she's been lying fair and square, clear in sight as she now is, since that month thee names, it's more'n likely the folks are out of her. But no vessel was ever put by herself in the situation of that craft. I reckon she's been worked up into it arter having lain ice-locked, which may sinnify that for months she's been hid, so that for all we're to know that thar hull may have been the first that passed close in with the island since the ice broke away and exposed her.'
I listened with a feverish passion of attention, devouring every syllable his drawling tongue dropped.
'Have you a chart of that island?' I asked.
He nodded gravely and stood up.
'I'm temperance aft, here,' said he. 'I can offer thee nothing stronger than lemonade.'
I was too violently agitated to thank him decently, and stuttering out an awkward acknowledgment, begged him again to let me see the chart of the island. He took the log-book with him to his berth, and returning, spread before me a chart representing a considerable expanse of the seas off the Horn. My sight was now used to the gloom; when he put his finger upon the place where he had seen the wreck I bent close, and observed that he indicated an indent in the tracing marked Palmer's Bay.
I entered this in my note-book and asked if he would sell the chart. He couldn't spare it, he said, but added I might easily furnish myself with what I wanted in that way at Cape Town.
My spirits were in such a tumult, my heart beat so wildly, the pulses of my head throbbed so, there was so much feverish confusion of mind and brain, I could scarcely rally my wits to the task of further questioning him; I seemed, indeed, scarcely able to understand him. I cannot express my amazement, the emotions that swelled my heart. 'Twas as sure as that I lived that the hull seen by this man was the 'Lady Emma,' and even whilst I bent over the chart, whilst I lifted up my eyes to look at him, the thought of the measureless distance at which the wreck lay, of Marie perhaps being at this very time alive in her; then the imagination of her having been rescued long since, then the fancy of the hull as a huge coffin in which my dear one lay frozen and dead; all this, I say, worked in me like a madness; I was beside myself, and I pored upon the chart panting, the sweat streaming from my brows, my hands cold as stone.
I remained, nevertheless, in the cabin of the whaler until the captain grew impatient and showed signs of wishing to be rid of me, on which I thanked him, shook hands, and was rowed ashore.
I drove to the boarding-house and there found the following letter—
'Mowbray: December 17, 1860.
'Mr. Hoskins' compliments to Mr. Moore. He has obtained leave to open the grave and will, with Mr. Moore's permission, call for him in a closed carriage at five o'clock to-morrow afternoon.'
This gave a new turn to my thoughts. My first humour was to decline the invitation. It was not Marie who lay in that grave, and I did not like the thought of the memory the sight would create. But after reflecting awhile, I resolved to attend, a glance would give sinews to the confirmation of the pictures. Sir Mortimer would also wish that I should take every measure to satisfy myself as to the identity of the remains.
Having written an answer, I went downstairs and sent it to the post by a servant, by which hour dinner was ready and I took my place. Five of us were at table, including the lady of the house, who carved. The colonel sitting opposite me almost immediately asked what news I had got of the ship seen on the ice. I had made up my mind to talk, partly because it did me good to do so, partly because I never could tell what hints and news might follow upon free speech.
I answered that the dismasted hull the captain of the whaler had seen was the 'Lady Emma.'
'Does he think there are people locked up in her?' cried the colonel with excitement.
A Dutch gentleman (I will call him Pollak) who sat next him inquired with civil curiosity what we were talking about. On which I put down my knife and fork and plainly related the story of the voyage of Marie Otway for her health, the dismasting of the ship, her abandonment by the sailors, the reason of my visiting the Cape, and I told him how I knew by the photographs that the body which had been brought to Cape Town was not Marie's; but I said nothing about the opening of her grave; I judged that Mr. Hoskins would not be pleased to find a gaping crowd in the cemetery at such a time.
They listened to me with deep attention. All saving the colonel had heard of the arrival of the schooner with the body; indeed—which was extraordinary—the Dutch gentleman was one of a few who had been present when the remains were taken out of the cask. I had passed several hours a day since my arrival in this man's company, and now learnt for the first time that he had seen the body.
It was no season, however, for questioning him, and the conversation of the table went to the wreck seen by the captain of the whaler.
All could have observed in my manner that I was deeply stirred; I could scarcely eat; I felt thirst only. The colonel talked fluently, but not serviceably; but I listened with kindness, for I was grateful to him for the accident of this astonishing discovery.
After dinner I went on to the stoep to breathe the fresh air and smoke and think; I hoped that the others, remarking the state of my mind, would leave me alone; they did so; the colonel, the Dutch gentleman, and two others, who arrived after dinner, drinking coffee at a table at the other end of the verandah. Their conversation flowed in a low hum, but that it concerned the topic we talked over at dinner I knew by the occasional looks one or another directed my way.
At last the Dutch gentleman, Mr. Pollak, came from his party and, pulling a chair to my side, seated himself. He said, speaking with an excellent English accent:
'I have thought as I saw the body you would wish me to describe it. It was not to be spoken of at table.'
'The photographs were ghastly pictures,' said I.
'Ach, Gott!' he cried, with such a roll of his eyes under the lids as made them balls of porcelain. 'But how should anyone—the handsomest—appear who was five weeks in spirits after having been drowned and lifted out of the sea? And still her hair was long and fair, and fine, and there was a shadow of beauty in the mask of her face—all saw it. It breathed like a perfume from a dead flower.'
'She was not Miss Otway,' said I.
He described every feature, and I continued to shake my head.
'No, no,' said I, 'she is not Miss Otway. The girl I want is in that ship on the ice; yet—is she there?'
'Well, it must be found out,' said he.
'I shall go about it to-morrow.'
'Mr. Moore,' said he, after a short silence, 'you are a stranger in Cape Town. I have many friends. If I can be useful, you will, I beg, command me.'
I thanked him and said I had brought a few letters of introduction, but, conceiving the purpose of my visit ended when I viewed the photographs, I had called nowhere. I slightly referred to my position in London—that is, as a partner in my father's bank—and added that the manager of a South African bank, whose headquarters were in Cape Town, had been a senior clerk in my father's office, but that I had not visited him.
'Would not the British admiral who is at St. Simon's Town,' said he, 'send out a ship of war to search for the wreck?'
I replied quickly, 'No, I must go myself,' and added, 'You may not have had experience in the ways of British officials.'
He smiled and answered. 'The admiral might give you leave to go in the ship he sent.'
'I can tell you exactly how it would be,' said I. 'I go to the admiral and the admiral demands the log-book of the whaler. The whaler has sailed, the admiral requires full particulars of the wreck before despatching one of his ships to a perilous part of the world; full particulars can be obtained only in London. By the time the British admiral sees his way the hull, when sought, has disappeared.'
He smiled again, stroking his chin.
'When I left the whaler,' said I, finding it eased my heart to talk, and pleased with his plain sympathy, 'I had formed a resolution. It may be, sir, that you are able to help me in it.'
He bowed.
'I intend at once—that is, to-morrow, if to-morrow will provide me with the opportunity—to hire a vessel and sail for Coronation Island as promptly as she can be equipped and victualled.'
'Ah,' he exclaimed, 'that looks like business. It will be expensive——'
I interrupted him with an exclamation.
'Yes,' he exclaimed, a little ruefully, 'that should not be thought of; it will be a marvellous, noble thing to save the life of your young lady and her companions. How can I help, now?—let me see. I am acquainted with most of the leading merchants here; I believe that my friend Mr. Vanderbyl is expecting a consignment from our Australian port. Perhaps the vessel has arrived. I will inquire. If it is the same brig that was here last spring she will be the very boat for you. Her name is the "Albatross." Did you observe a brig painted white amongst the shipping when you went on board the whaler?'
'I did not.'
'If she comes with the same captain and can be hired, he will be your man; Captain Christopher Cliffe, a little clever, honest, sober sailor. I know him very well. He was second mate of a ship I sailed to England in. Well, I will inquire and see what is to be done, and you also will inquire. But the "Albatross" is your ship, sir—a clipper. She slides like a knife through the sea, and should put you abreast of the hull as quickly as steam.'
'But she is not yet arrived.'
'She is due.'
'She will need time to discharge her cargo?'
'If she is in the Bay,' said he, 'she should be able to sail with you in a fortnight, and that is as quick as gold itself shall let you be in this climate.'
I was excited by his praise of the brig, and, standing up, I asked him to accompany me to the waterside, and search the Bay with his sight for her. But he had an engagement, so I stepped forth alone, there still remaining a long evening of daylight.
I made my way to the same place I had embarked from that afternoon, and looking at the scene of Bay which glowed like the sky with the evening splendour, stretching out from my feet, and brimming into gold trembling into purple to the white beach abreast, which ran in a curve flashing like light against the lip of the brine, I counted no less than twenty-two ships riding to their anchors: vessels of all rigs and of several nationalities, and, as though heaven were on my side in this time of trial and grief, I saw what I guessed was the vessel I was here to look for. She lay, curiously enough, immediately astern of the whaler—a milk-white figure, slightly swaying on the satin-smooth heave, with wet green gleams trembling along her as she lifted her metal sheathing.
I said to a coloured waterman who stood near, pointing to the brig:
'What brig is that, do you know?'
He answered immediately, 'De "Albatross," boss!'
'Ha!'
'From Sydney, boss.'
'When did she arrive?'
'Two yastardays, boss.'
But it was not wonderful she should have escaped my observation; in going and coming from the whaler I had thought of nothing but what I was to hear and what I had heard; and earlier my sight, often as it wandered to the shipping, never paused to distinguish.
I saw no more of my Dutch friend till next morning, when, at eleven o'clock, whilst I was making ready to drive into the town and inquire about the brig 'Albatross,' a servant knocked on the door, and said Mr. Pollak was below with another and wished to see me. I at once descended.
His companion was a little man, almost a dwarf; his nose was as long as Punch's, his mouth much like that puppet's, wide and thin, with the look of a smirk in the curl of the lips at either extremity; he wore little slips of grey whiskers; his eyes were deep sunk, grey and kindly, and he blinked them with a nervous fury when he dodged a sort of sea-bow on Mr. Pollak introducing him. He was almost bald, and was perhaps fifty-five years of age, much curved in the back, his shanks slightly arching out. Mr. Pollak called him Captain Christopher Cliffe, and introduced him as master and part-owner of the brig 'Albatross.'
'I know,' said the worthy Dutchman, 'that time is precious to you. I am glad we have found you in. I cannot stay. But I will leave Captain Cliffe behind me to talk with you.'
And picking up his hat he nodded and went out.
I asked the little man if Mr. Pollak had told him my story.
'Enough,' he answered, 'to make me understand there is reason to hurry.'
'The whaler "Sea Queen,"' said I, 'lying just ahead of you——'
'She sailed this morning,' he interrupted.
'She sighted a hull high and dry on the ice of Coronation Island, New Orkneys,' said I, pulling out my note-book to give him the date. 'That hull, when she was made a raft of by the loss of her masts, was abandoned by the crew in latitude 58° 45´ south, longitude 45° 10´ west. Three people were left in her—one of them a young lady, dearer to me than my heart's blood. The "Lady Emma" is as surely the hull that was seen by the Yankee as that you who hear me are alive.'
'You think to find the people still locked up in her?' said he, blinking and snapping his lips with many convulsive grimaces.
'I mean to find that out. Is your brig for hire?'
'Ay.'
'When will she be ready?'
'I hope to have the remaining cargo out of her by Monday next; she's then at your service.'
'Have you a crew?'
'I'll get a good 'un when you're ready, sir.'
'What's the tonnage of the vessel?'
'One hundred and seventy register.'
'What'll be the cost?'
'Thirty shillings per ton a month, we finding everything, or fifteen shillings per ton a month and you finding everything.'
I put down the figures, and said, 'How long is it going to take the brig to arrive off the island?'
He talked a little to himself, blinking and grimacing absurdly, and replied, 'Call it a month.'
'I should like to see the brig, Captain Cliffe.'
'At once, if you will, sir.'
I sent for a cab and we drove to the waterside. He talked freely when he was out of the house and driving. I found something very honest and diverting in this little man's looks and manner of speech. He had an amazingly brisk and nimble mind, I thought; I got at that in a very little while. He went behind my questions, fetched a number of new possibilities for hope to feed on out of the scheme of the search, and heartened me vastly by his clear view and statement of my wishes and plans—that is, he said that the hull sighted by the whaler was beyond all question the wreck of the 'Lady Emma'; everything tallied—colour of sides, situation, time, down to the very stump of foremast. Then, since three were abandoned in her, why shouldn't they still be aboard? Of course it was my duty, he said, to sail right away. Who wouldn't, to deliver his young lady out of such a scene of horror? But humanity was in it too. The hull was to be searched for and overhauled, and I was quite right in reckoning that if I left that job to the British Admiral the hulk would have disappeared, or the people inside have perished into statues of ice, before the official mind had settled what to do.
'Not unlikely,' said he as we drove along, 'the parties have been taken out; sealers and whalers are constantly moving about those waters; but we aren't to think of that. If they're gone, so much the better, for then they're safe elsewhere; but it's your business to consider that they're still there and to fetch 'em.'
Thus we talked, and as we rowed to the brig we continued to chat, he entering very fully into the cost and character of the equipment we should require, the time we should occupy, supposing them alive in the hull, whether we returned with them to the Cape or headed for the nearest South American port.
My spirits rose under the influence of this man's conversation. His practical mind put everything so clearly that in imagination, even whilst we made for the brig, I had realised my hopes—I had rescued Marie and her companions—we were proceeding home!
The brig did not show so milk-white when close to as from the beach; rusty blood-like stains lay dried in scars under the bolt heads and other metal projections, but her figure gained in beauty when approached. I am no sailor, but when I ran my eye over her moulded shape, observed her keen entry, the swan-like curve of her run lifting to an elliptical stern, with a swell of white side that made me think of a polished heave of sea, I would have wagered there were few swifter vessels of her rig and tonnage then afloat. A lighter or something of that sort was alongside receiving cargo; a man in a cloth cap and half Wellington boots was perched on the rail close to where the cargo was going over the side; he made notes with a pencil in a little book; three or four coloured men were winding at a winch. I had caught, whilst in the boat, the clinking noise of the pawls slipping over the sheet-calm water in a sort of music that wanted but the accompaniment of a hurricane lung or two to furnish out a fine ocean concert. The man on the rail touched his cap when we gained the deck.
'That's my mate, Mr. Bland,' said Captain Cliffe. 'He's a good seaman. I can recommend him.'
I sent a glance of curiosity at the sailor, guessing if I hired this brig he would go with us; he had the face of a sheep, dark eyes set far back close against his ears, a thick black beard, and a weather-tanned skin, filled with the holes of small-pox. An ugly man indeed! Yet you saw honesty and intelligence like a light of good humour in the expression of him.
Captain Cliffe took me round the decks of the little craft first of all. I had no eye for points of marine equipment, yet noticed a smart little galley with red tiles on the floor, a seat athwartships, and a small array of saucepans, kettles, and the like, all very clean. The windlass looked small, so roomy was the forecastle. The captain then took me aft to the companion, which was painted green, trotting by my side, of the height of a boy, from time to time looking up into my face to observe if I was pleased.
I halted in the companion and asked how many boats he carried; he answered two, and pointed to a long-boat stowed near the galley, this side of it, and then to the water astern, where a small boat was floating.
'We ought,' said I, 'to go well provided with boats of an exact form and strength for passing through the breach of the sea. The waves break heavily under the hull, the whaling captain said, and we must be prepared for a high surf the whole length of the coast.'
'You're quite right, sir,' said the little man. 'But if we come to terms you've only got to commission me, and whatever's needful I'll see to. For instance, there's a height of ice cliff, and grappling irons 'll be wanted. And we should carry a few lengths of rope ladder. It isn't as though we had to find her. We know she's high and dry. Make the worst of it and call it fifty feet above the wash. That's sure unless the ice had shifted her. And we've got to be provided with machinery for entering.'
Thus speaking he descended and I followed.
The companion steps were almost up and down; on the right, at the bottom of the ladder, was a sleeping berth, a sort of cupboard with a sliding door like a smacksman's bedroom; on the left was the main cabin, a larger interior than I expected to see. It was well lighted by a frame of windows overhead and round scuttles in the walls, and furnished with a table, locker seats, and a few camp stools. Forward was a brightly polished brass fireplace. Three small berths were bulkheaded off this living room, one of which the captain told me was a sail and boatswain's locker, and the other a bread and store locker; 'but we can clear 'em out,' said he, 'when they come to be wanted.'
I was satisfied, and then and there resolved to hire this brig and sail quickly for that far-off ice-clad island. I sat down on one of the lockers and asked the captain to take pen and paper, and we talked about what would be required, making notes, and reckoning up the expenses till I bethought me of my engagement with Mr. Hoskins. And with reluctance and a hearty handshake took my leave.
I was rowed ashore, and on the way to the boarding-house called at the bank whose manager had been my father's clerk. He was astonished and delighted to see me; he had known me, indeed, ever since I was an Eton schoolboy. I had no time on this occasion to enter fully into the cause of my being at the Cape; my immediate purpose was served when he assured me that I was welcome to draw upon the bank to the amount I wanted.
At five o'clock Mr. Hoskins drove up to the boarding-house, and we at once started for the cemetery. He was alone in a closed carriage, and was dressed in mourning as deep as man's apparel will express grief. I, too, had been careful to clothe myself in black. I had not seen Mr. Hoskins since the arrival of the 'Cambrian,' and his voice and presence carried me on board again, renewed the quiet incidents of the passage, and returned me in imagination to Southampton on that memorable day of my departure. He was pale and melancholy, and his spirits seemed depressed with thought of the distressing ceremony we were bent upon.
'I am sorry now,' said he as he drove along, 'that I solicited permission to inspect the remains. The photographs were perfectly convincing, and still I felt it—I feel it—my duty to make as sure as opportunity admits. Captain Oilier will expect me to tell him all that it was in my power to learn. Nor, perhaps, should I feel perfectly satisfied to erect the monument I intend for my poor child without looking into her coffin to see that it is she herself who will be under it.'
I answered that this melancholy undertaking was even less needful to me than to him; but that, like himself, I saw the necessity of confirming my own opinion by every possible testimony, for the peace of my own heart as well as for the satisfaction of Miss Otway's father.
We then talked of my chances of finding Marie in the hull upon the island, and I told him how I had hired the brig 'Albatross' and intended myself to sail in her as soon as she discharged her cargo and was ready for sea, which I hoped would be about the close of the following week.
I saw little of the scenery we were driven by; we passed a number of gigantic aloes on the roadside; the hard-blue mountains, towering into the heavens with keenly cut skylines, with great spaces of their sides lustrous with the trembling and delicate foliage of the silver tree, wound with us as we wound, or shadowed us as we drove; they were an eternal presence, like the cloudless blue over them.
Whilst Mr. Hoskins was telling me how he contrived to obtain an order for the exhumation of the remains, we arrived at the cemetery where we alighted, and my companion conducted me to the grave whose situation he was exactly acquainted with. A number of persons were beside the grave, two were sextons armed with mattocks, or spades, the others were strangers and remained so to me; but one, I believe, was a medical man, and another a government official. They raised their hats to us, and after the exchange of a few commonplace greetings, decorously attuned, the diggers went to work.
The body had lain in this grave since August—four months. The heat thrilled in a sort of surging wave that closed upon the respiration with a sense of suffocation whilst we stood watching the diggers. I shuddered at the idea of looking. I had come to Cape Town conceiving that this body was Marie's, I now knew it was not hers; nevertheless, I guessed that the aspect of the dead face, at rest and out of sight under the cleaving spades, must become a memory that would be inseparably associated with Marie's image, whether I was to behold her again or not, and my spirits shrunk as I stood watching.
The soil was red, and the diggers turned it cheerily. Mr. Hoskins talked in a low tone apart with one of the strangers; that man was probably an undertaker or connected with the firm of buriers. Many rich strange flowers and plants glowed like jewels or glanced like snow upon or about the graves round about; it was a big tract of ground, all the sculptures, and monuments of several sorts showing at a distance sharp as carvings in ivory through the hot rare blue atmosphere.
The group of us were the only living occupants of that field of sleepers. Doubtless the order had gone forth for all to be excluded till the coffin had been reburied. They came to it at last; it was raised with some trouble, a plain black box, and placed upon the edge of the grave, and without an instant's loss of time the person with whom Mr. Hoskins had been conversing, unscrewed the lid—and we looked.
I had expected to behold something that was to shock the sight, and create a memory of pain and disgust; instead, there lay before us, her head pillowed, her arms peacefully crossed, the form of a young woman whose face, through chymic changes explicable only by the pen of science, had filled and freshened in complexion to an aspect easily supportable by the most nervous or sensitive eye. The flesh was discoloured; in the pictures it had shown as an ulcerous ghastly white; but here, in this coffin, the face was far more defined and distinguishable in lineament, I may even add in expression, than in the photographs. I could almost understand my Dutch friend's reference to a shadow of beauty lurking in this dead mask of countenance. The hair was very fair, and beautifully abundant, but it was not the hair of Marie, the hands were not Marie's. Now that I looked upon her I observed that she resembled Marie to a less degree even than the pictures expressed the likeness. I shook my head and drew back a pace, covering my face, the sight was pitiful—I could not bear to look beyond a moment or two. I thought of that form in the loneliness of the ocean off the Horn, and then again I was agitated by a violent reaction in my spirits; for though I had been certain it would not prove Marie, yet I knew not what I was to behold either, what tragic, heart-subduing surprise that coffin might have in store for me, and I shrunk back, shaking my head and hiding my face.
Mr. Hoskins viewed the remains in silence, then sobbed, and I looked at him. Our eyes met across the coffin, and exclaiming, 'It is my daughter, Mr. Moore! It is Charlotte; the wife of Captain Henry Ollier,' he sank upon his knees and folded his hands in prayer beside his child.
I had arrived at Cape Town on December 13, and on the 26th of the same month the colonial brig 'Albatross' lay in Table Bay, waiting for me to go aboard in order to sail. This was surely what the shipowners would call 'prompt despatch'!
On the morning of the 26th I said good-bye to my friends in the boarding-house and drove to one of the jetties where Captain Cliffe awaited me. I was accompanied by the colonel and Mr. Pollak. A considerable crowd had assembled to see me embark; the story had leaked out; it was in the papers that I had come to the Cape to identify the body brought from sea by the 'Emerald,' and that, being satisfied it was not that of the girl I was in search of, I was going to the New Orkneys in the hope of finding her locked up in a wreck described as corresponding in every material detail with the hull of the 'Lady Emma.'
It was an extraordinary romance; Mr. Pollak had assured me that all Cape Town was talking about it. For the first time in my life I was made to understand the inconvenience and discomfort of publicity. A number of ladies were in the crowd, and they thrust most unceremoniously forward to catch sight of me. When I got into the boat the crowd good-naturedly cheered; I did not feel easy till the oars were dipping and the boat under way, for the crowd was bringing others, and as we rowed from the jetty I saw some men and women running towards the water.
Mr. Pollak and the colonel went on board with me. It was a rich glowing day, a number of white steam-like clouds were circling above Cape Town, but low over the water, brushing it into a wide sheet of rippling blue splendour, a hot fresh breeze was blowing; it swept straight down the Bay, with a brassy light in the air that made you think of the wind as coloured by the yellow glares of the sandy land it had travelled across.
Mr. Pollak had on several occasions visited the brig; the colonel had not before viewed her close; he was greatly pleased and hummed a tune approvingly as he accompanied me about the decks. One detail of furniture, his own suggestion, he lingered over; it was a bright brass cannon mounted on the quarter-deck.
'He'll do for you!' he exclaimed, slapping the breech of the piece. 'That should fetch an echo loud enough to awaken the dead.'
A little further aft stood a mortar, with its round mouth gaping at the sky.
'What's that for?' asked the colonel. 'Isn't the gun noisy enough to alarm 'em if they're aboard?'
'It is my idea,' said Mr. Pollak. 'Suppose it should be impossible to scale the slope and reach the ship; here is an engine that will throw you a ball and line which anyone on board may catch and pull ladders up by.'
'Good!' exclaimed the colonel.
We then examined the two fresh boats which Captain Cliffe had purchased on my behalf; they were large, strong, handsome whale-boats, strengthened by iron beams or girders under the thwarts; and made lifeboats of by a quantity of cork fenders carefully laced or otherwise seamed along the sides.
'These,' said I, 'together with rope ladders hooked for scaling, and grappling irons, form my machinery.'
'It is all you will need,' said Mr. Pollak, 'and I am sure everyone must pray that God will bless and prosper your noble voyage.'
I took the worthy Dutchman's hand and thanked him with a silent grip.
At that moment the windlass began to clank; immediately a hoarse voice bawled out a song whose burthen was caught and flung in thunder into the air by the seven or eight hearts who bowed and rose at the windlass handles.
'Come, Mr. Pollak; come, colonel,' I exclaimed; 'there's time for a bumper.'
I called to the captain to send aft the lad who was to wait upon us in the cabin, and descended with my friends. A magnum of champagne was opened, and we filled and drank to the voyage. I obliged Captain Cliffe to come down and drink. He cried through the skylight that he durst not leave the deck for above three minutes; I told him to come, and the two gentlemen toasted the little man, who delivered, with several grimaces, a brief sailorly speech, full of hope, then rushed on deck.
I bade Mr. Pollak good-bye with a full heart. The colonel followed him into the boat, which put off, and then hung by on her oars to watch us. At this time the anchor was off the ground, and the crew were making sail on the brig, whose bowsprit, with a white pinion of jib swelling from it, was rounding, finger-like, in a slow, pointing way for the open; the sheep-faced mate stood on the forecastle shouting orders; a sailor was at the wheel; Captain Cliffe crossed the deck from left to right, looking up and around, moving swiftly, a doll of a man, grimacing and blinking at every pause in his nimble trot.
Some of the ships round about had got our tale, I fancy, or at least the scent of our errand; since from most of them we were watched by many heads above the rail. Presently the brig's stern was to the wind, her topsails filled, the lighter sails glanced wing-shaped to the yard-arms to the drag of the gear; I waved my hat from the quarter to my two friends, and they flourished a last farewell. My voyage, strange as any that had ever been undertaken in this world, was begun!
We were the only ship at that time leaving the Bay, and I think our lonely going must have given a certain majesty and nobleness to the figure of the vessel in the eyes of those who watched us, with the significance of her dangerous, surprising, romantic mission going along with her. I don't know what my own sensations were: I was sensible perhaps of a little triumph of spirits at this getting away so quickly, and then there was the feeling that I was in action, that no time was being lost; and yet there was a heaviness at my heart too, the chill of doubt, a frosty dread that the errand would prove profitless, and that if God suffered me to return home it must be as a mourner for Marie.
But we were sailing through a wide, shining scene of commanding beauty, lofty and gloriously coloured, and the influence of it, I don't doubt, rescued me from the dark mood imagination might have raised. The breeze blew hot, but the sweetness of flowers and fruit was in it, and the scent of the land was brisk with the salt of the sea. In a very little while the seamen had clothed the brig from the main-royal yard to the waterways, and as she floated onwards, now slightly curtseying to a small breathing of swell, the mountains went with her, and the ships astern closed into clusters past the tail of our mirror-bright line of wake. The mountains towered on our left; Cape Town vanished, and we softly drove with a noise of fountains on either hand past rich curves of shore on whose margin the huge Atlantic comber formed and fell in snowstorms with white houses beyond the foam like models in ivory shining amid the greenery.
And all the time we were alone! This was the wonderful feature of our departure. I could not see the smallest boat in motion. The water was like a great lonely lake, and the silence on the face of the mountains was in the wind, in a presence that seemed to compel isolation for us, hushing all life off the face of the bay down to where the ships were lying too far off to trouble the sense of solitude.
The crew were now occupied in coiling away the rigging and clearing up the decks, and I had an opportunity of viewing them. All were white men; there were eight, together with a cook and a boy to wait upon us aft, making with captain and mate twelve of a company, which was plenty. Cliffe had told me he would not ship a certificated second mate; the man who went as boatswain would relieve the mate and stand a watch. That man was a wiry, middle-aged seaman; he wore a spread of grey whisker scissors-trimmed, close to his face, and dark eager eyes which he rolled quickly as a monkey; he sang out briskly, and sprang about the decks. Little Captain Cliffe, observing that I watched the man, came and stood beside me and spoke up softly to my ear:
'I engaged that chap because of his knowledge of the ice. He told me he was seven years whaling in the Pacific and Southern oceans. He is the most wonderful jumper I ever heard of.'
'So old as he is?'
'Forty-five or thereabouts. Men of that sort soon lose the reckoning of their birth. I don't allow their mothers ever enter 'em. They're always the age that suits 'em to be. But look what a life it is, sir! the iron it will put into a young 'un's hair! the kinks it'll run into a young 'un's back! All the hard life and the bad food works out through a man's pores after a few years, bows him down, and hardens in his face with a crust of years. He's a marvellous jumper that, sir. Tell ye what he did—and it astonished me—there was a horse and trap standing close beside where we were talking. He turns on a sudden and sings out, "Captain, did yer ever see this done?" and putting his feet together and clenching his fists he bent his knees, let go of the ground like and shot as a bolt, clearing the horse till you could see half the length of his own legs of blue sky 'twixt his feet and the animal's back.'
He gazed up at me, blinking and grinning, and added, 'I allow, should it come to any awkward climbing jobs, we'll find that covey handy.'
I lingered a little to watch the brig and the coast. The swell was coming straight out of the wide sea, but the breeze still followed fiery and splendid with the light of that land; the little ship bowed softly; the long heave under the bows did not stop her; she floated with erect spars, her yards square, the canvas breathing like human breasts as her bowsprit rose and fell; yet a glance astern showed me she was already whitening the water.
At every look, the high land, purple and hard in that noontide brilliance, yielded new features. It was towering now on to Hont Bay, with a trend which made a mighty shoulder of it as it sounded towards Simon's Town and the Cape of Good Hope: the towering terraces were on our port quarter with Robben Island to starboard, and ahead was the glittering breast of the Atlantic with the sea-line hard-carved against the faint silvery blue. I looked for a sail, but nothing broke that measureless run of horizon; the junction of air and water had a wild loveliness, indescribable, thanks perhaps to the violet of the brine that washed the light azure; though the fear and mystery of beauty I found in it then doubtless came of the thought of what lay hidden from me hundreds of leagues deep beyond that slope of airy silver. Had we been a ship of ancient explorers the field of ocean could not have shown more barren than my eyes, exploring its recesses under the sharp of my hand, found it.
Some seamen came aft to spread an awning. They eyed me askew; of course they knew the brig's mission, and perhaps thought me a little mad; but it would be all one to them; there is worse to be suffered at sea than a cruise off the Horn in the midsummer of this side on such wages as they had signed for, in a tight well-built brig. In fact, they rolled about their work with a sort of rollicking carriage that made one reckon they had entered upon the voyage with jolly hearts as on a yachting jaunt, secure from all danger and dirt of cargo; only it was as likely they'd come on board a little merry with Jack's custom of farewell.