“‘I removed from the hotel to a house in the upper part of the town, and after making the necessary arrangements for a protracted absence, and three weeks from the time I went into the Wisemans’ employ, I found myself at sea. The first voyage—and it was a short one, not exceeding a twelvemonth—put me up to the business, and investing all I had cleared in the ship, after a stay of six weeks on shore, leaving my wife to mingle in the best society which the place could afford, I put again to sea. It was on the homeward bound passage, in a full ship, after an absence of little more than fifteen months, that within a degree or two of the line I spoke a clean ship, with letters on board from my wife and the owners. Before I could board her, however, we were separated by a sudden squall, and night coming on lost sight of her altogether. We did not see her again, and it was when giving way to some natural vexation at the accident that I received the first intimation from Mr. Jinney, my mate, of the secret intimacy which had long existed between Ellen and the younger Wiseman. The man’s tale was a straight one, corroborated by several circumstances too trivial for notice at the moment of their occurrence, yet of sufficient importance, when taken together in connection with his story, to darken the past and cast an ominous shadow over the time to come. “‘Though I had thought to strike her dead at first sight, with the stretch of sea between us, yet old ocean, wiser than a thousand graybeards, played the soother again, even in this great sorrow—the faster it bore me toward her, as the ship heeled to the trades—the wilder the gale I encountered off the very shores where she breathed, the more it seemed to uplift its voice against the tempest of fury which must have inevitably involved me in the ruin it brought down. It was well done,’ he exclaimed fiercely, ‘here’s to thee, old theme of the poets—broad pathway for spirits like mine to sweep! Neither the frailty of woman nor the malice of man’—here his voice grew too hoarse for utterance, and drinking off the liquor like water, he dashed the glass to the deck, walking the cabin with hasty strides, like a tiger chafing in his cage—while I, with a curse on my lips for what, as God is my judge, in spite of the man’s emotion, I believed to be a lie, sat chained to my seat, as by some predestined spell.