'True,' said Captain Strutt. 'And still, Mr. Moore, if I was in your place, I shouldn't rest satisfied with the evidence of those portraits.' 'Oh, but Mr. Hoskins and I are agreed,' said I. 'He recognises his child and I know that it is not Miss Otway.' 'It's my intention to exhume the remains--a sorrowful task--if they'll grant me permission,' said Mr. Hoskins. 'Since you _must_ now proceed to the Cape, then, if it would satisfy you to look into the coffin when it is opened, you will be very welcome, sir.' 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.'