From this date until I sailed my time was wholly occupied in preparing for the voyage. I went to London with my father to shop; Mrs. Burke accompanied us, and half our purchases were owing to her advice. Fortunately for her, as the wife of a sailor who was able to take her to sea with him, she was childless, and could afford to give me much of her time. They reckoned I was to be away fourteen months, but Captain Burke advised us, having regard to the character of the voyage, especially to the passage from Valparaiso to Sydney, to stock for a round trip of eighteen months: this he thought would provide for a good margin. Clothes for all the climates, from the roasting calms of the line down to the frost-black gales of the Horn, were purchased; many delicacies were laid in--a hundred elegant trifles of wine and condiments, of sweetmeats and potted stuffs, to supplement the captain's plain table or to find me a relish for some hungry howling hour when the galley fire should be washed out. Mr. Moore wrote that he frequently visited the ship, and that he and Mrs. Burke between them were making my cabin as comfortable as my old nurse's foresight and experience could manage. So went by this wretched time of waiting and of preparation. About a fortnight before the ship sailed my father received a letter from Captain Burke, telling him that he had engaged a surgeon. His name was Owen. His age he said was about forty-three; he was a widower. The loss of his wife and two daughters three years before this period had broken him down; he was unable to practise; had travelled in the hopes of distracting his mind, but his means were slender and he was unable to be long away or go far; yet when he endeavoured to resume work he found himself unequal to his professional calls. He thereupon sold his practice and had lived for some months in retirement upon a trifling income. Having seen Captain Burke's advertisement he offered his services in exchange for a free voyage. The captain described him as a gentlemanly man, his credentials excellent, and his experience considerable. CHAPTER III THE 'LADY EMMA' On the morning of a day for ever memorable to me as the date of my departure from my home--namely, March 31, 1860--my father and I went to London, there to stay till April 2, when it was arranged that I should go on board the ship at Gravesend. My grief worked like a passion in me; yet I was quiet; my resolution to be calm whitened my cheeks, but again and again my eyes brimmed in spite of my efforts. Oh, I so feared this going away alone! Even though I was to be in the company of my faithful, dear Mrs. Burke, my very heart so shrank up in me at the idea of saying farewell to my lover, with the chance of never seeing him more, that sometimes when I said my prayers I would ask God to make me too ill to leave home.