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.
I now went below to see to my berth and arrange my traps; but came to a halt at the cabin table, to lean upon it and think. This interior was wholly unlike the 'Lady Emma's'; yet the skylight, the lockers, and several trifling details of cabin furniture brought to my recollection that day in the Thames when I had said good-bye to Marie in her cabin, alone. What had been her sufferings since? If she was in the hull she had been imprisoned at this date for five months, and by the time we got to her six! For six months she would have been locked up in a motionless hulk, high perched upon a savage island, heavily faced with ice, with a thunder of surf far down for ever in her ear, and always the same white, desolate, fierce prospect of frozen cliffs and rolling ocean. Would it not have killed her? I clasped my hands in the torment of the thought. Should I be making this voyage to a remote ice-girt island merely to enter the wreck and behold the remains of my Marie as I had looked into that coffin in Cape Town beholding another?
I passed into my own berth, a small but comfortable box, and after busying myself for half an hour, during which I had recalled my mind to something of its former composure, I re-entered the cabin and found the table laid for dinner. The little sea parlour looked cheerful with this hospitable setting. The heel of a windsail buzzed in the skylight. There had happened a little shift of wind whilst I was below, for the brig leaned over and I heard a smart hissing--the seething of foam sliding past; it was as cooling a noise as the sound of a hard shower of rain on a dusty August day at home.