I continued alone for some time with my mind tormented by anxiety and expectation. Though old Mr. Hoskins declared the portraits to be his daughter's, yet he might very well be mistaken, too. I waited in dread. The distress of expectation and suspense was complicated by the fear that the action of the sea, the convulsion and agony of drowning, had so wrought as to make a cheat of the face: to the old man it was to be his child, and to me it was to plead dimly as Marie out of its shrunk, ghastly looks! How should we decide then? Indeed, none might ever get to certainly know _who_ it was, and I should go home fancying I had viewed the face of my beloved in death, and fancying, too, for months to come, that she had been rescued and, by the many strange crosses of travel and adventure, detained, but that she was coming and I should hear. Thus I sat, my mind in anguish, starting up sometimes to pace the few feet of charterhouse deck, then flinging myself down miserable and mad with thought. A canary suddenly sang loudly in a cage under the clock; in every plank was the pulse of the engines, like a tingling of blood in veins; from over the side came a note of stealthy hissing, subtly threading the noises of the deck like someone in a theatre low hissing through the voices of the actors. In about twenty minutes the captain arrived with Mr. Hoskins. He brought the old gentleman in and hooked the door ajar. Mr. Hoskins was a fresh-coloured old man, white bearded, with intensely black eye brows curling like moustaches over his glittering black eyes; he was dressed in black. I had observed in him a patient way of looking, of speaking; his voice was a little tremulous with time--he was probably sixty-five years of age. He held a large envelope which, on entering, he put down on top of his hat, and making me a bow slowly, he exclaimed, in the broken tones of his years: 'It is truly extraordinary, sir, that you and I should be going to the Cape on the same errand, in the same ship.' 'Truly indeed,' I answered. 'The captain has told you my story?' and here I looked at Captain Strutt, who answered 'Yes. Those are the portraits,' and he pointed to the envelope. I glanced at the package as at a sheet or veil which conceals a face you love which your heart shrinks from beholding in death. 'She's not your young lady, sir,' said Mr. Hoskins, slowly extending his arm to take up the envelope. 'She is my daughter. My niece instantly recognised the likeness.' He sighed heavily, seating himself with a slow movement, whilst he put the envelope upon his knee to draw a spectacle case from his pocket. Meanwhile he spoke: 'She was twenty-four years of age and had been married three years. Her husband took her to Santiago and left her there with her sister. She was to have joined him at Monte Video--but you have heard, sir, you have heard?'