'The whaler "Sea Queen,"' said I, 'lying just ahead of you----' 'She sailed this morning,' he interrupted. 'She sighted a hull high and dry on the ice of Coronation Island, New Orkneys,' said I, pulling out my note-book to give him the date. 'That hull, when she was made a raft of by the loss of her masts, was abandoned by the crew in latitude 58° 45´ south, longitude 45° 10´ west. Three people were left in her--one of them a young lady, dearer to me than my heart's blood. The "Lady Emma" is as surely the hull that was seen by the Yankee as that you who hear me are alive.' 'You think to find the people still locked up in her?' said he, blinking and snapping his lips with many convulsive grimaces. 'I mean to find that out. Is your brig for hire?' 'Ay.' 'When will she be ready?' 'I hope to have the remaining cargo out of her by Monday next; she's then at your service.' 'Have you a crew?' 'I'll get a good 'un when you're ready, sir.' 'What's the tonnage of the vessel?' 'One hundred and seventy register.' 'What'll be the cost?' 'Thirty shillings per ton a month, we finding everything, or fifteen shillings per ton a month and you finding everything.' I put down the figures, and said, 'How long is it going to take the brig to arrive off the island?' He talked a little to himself, blinking and grimacing absurdly, and replied, 'Call it a month.' 'I should like to see the brig, Captain Cliffe.' 'At once, if you will, sir.' I sent for a cab and we drove to the waterside. He talked freely when he was out of the house and driving. I found something very honest and diverting in this little man's looks and manner of speech. He had an amazingly brisk and nimble mind, I thought; I got at that in a very little while. He went behind my questions, fetched a number of new possibilities for hope to feed on out of the scheme of the search, and heartened me vastly by his clear view and statement of my wishes and plans--that is, he said that the hull sighted by the whaler was beyond all question the wreck of the 'Lady Emma'; everything tallied--colour of sides, situation, time, down to the very stump of foremast. Then, since three were abandoned in her, why shouldn't they still be aboard? Of course it was my duty, he said, to sail right away. Who wouldn't, to deliver his young lady out of such a scene of horror? But humanity was in it too. The hull was to be searched for and overhauled, and I was quite right in reckoning that if I left that job to the British Admiral the hulk would have disappeared, or the people inside have perished into statues of ice, before the official mind had settled what to do. 'Not unlikely,' said he as we drove along, 'the parties have been taken out; sealers and whalers are constantly moving about those waters; but we aren't to think of that. If they're gone, so much the better, for then they're safe elsewhere; but it's your business to consider that they're still there and to fetch 'em.'