'Yes. She looks it, sir. See the boats at her cranes. What sort of daylight filters through those greasy grimy scuttles in her side, I wonder? She is an American, and draws decently; three years out by the looks of her, fresh from parts where its always too hot or always too cold, and with how many barrels aboard, ha! It's said no seaman thinks anything of a man as a sailor who's learnt his trade in a greaser. For my part I look upon 'em with respect and admiration. What Jack of us all sees the like of their seafaring? Let alone the weather, and that touches the extremes. What magnificent work in boats! what nerve and determination! To think of one of those egg-shells,' said he, nodding at the boats at the whaler's cranes, 'being in tow of a rushing mountain of stinking black flesh, shooting blood and brine sky high, every thrash of the tail a Niagara drench of rearing white water--ha!' He sucked in his cheeks, blew them out again in a low whistle of admiration, and walked off. I did not land till four o'clock in the afternoon. Mr. Hoskins, when we parted, put his card into my hand, with an address at Cape Town upon it, and begged me to let him know the house I put up at, that he might communicate in case I should think proper to confirm the revelation of the photographs by an inspection of the remains. CHAPTER XXIII THE SHIP SEEN ON THE ICE I was advised against the two or three bad hotels in Cape Town, and whilst in the ship had obtained the address of a boarding-house. It was a comfortable big Dutch-built house, low, without chimneys; it stood in a garden full of moon-lilies, and many lovely flowers, the fairest of them scentless. Here I found a colonel from India for his health, a Dutch couple, and one or two others. From the stoep of this house you saw the grand mass of Table Mountain, seemingly close to; the shadow of its noble bulk seemed to fill the heavens and swell with sensible, usurping presence into the far reaches of the country. I had travelled in mountainous parts in Europe, but never before witnessed such a tyrannous domination as this. The colossal ramparts caught up the whole prospect whilst you looked in a swinging sweep of their length, till 'twas all mountain with the steam-like vapour shredding away from the boiling whiteness atop, and the houses clustering into the base like things of life shuddering back into the giant refuge.