'Then,' said I, 'I take it, Mr. Bodkin, that you, who have had plenty of experience of the ice down south, give me little reason to hope that we shall find the wreck whole or the people abandoned in her alive?' He rolled his monkey eyes briskly at this, fretting first one cropped grey whisker and then the other with the palm of his hand. 'I allow,' he answered after a silence, during which little Captain Cliffe viewed him as sternly as his nervous distorting affection permitted, 'that your chance is as good as any chance at sea hever can be. But I don't mind saying,' he added, standing up, catching hold of his cap and revolving it, 'that our number is agin your luck.' 'What's that?' exclaimed the captain. 'Let the gent count us. There's thirteen souls.' 'Go forward,' said the captain, 'and get on with your work.' The man, with a civil flourish of his hand to his brow, left the cabin. 'There's no fool like Jack fool,' said Captain Cliffe. I confess, however, that when I reckoned up to myself the number of people on board and made No. 13, I felt a little uneasy. I said nothing to the captain, but the thing weighed upon me. It was perfectly natural that at such a time I should be superstitious; certainly a good omen would have heartened me: why, then, should not so unlucky a circumstance as that of thirteen forming the number of us in the brig prove depressing? I was so weak in this way that I had serious thoughts of ordering Cliffe to tranship one of the men at the first chance that offered. Also, the boatswain Bodkin's description of the island, his talk of the cliffs, of ice-splitting and thundering down in blocks, worried me by exciting new apprehensions. I was sorry I had sent for the man. I had come from the deck to my dinner in tolerably good spirits, and when I returned on deck I felt as melancholy as ever I had been in my gloomiest hour aboard the 'Cambrian.' The mood lasted for the remainder of the day, so that, spite of the noble sailing breeze, this, my first start in search of Marie, seemed as inauspicious as though the scheme had failed in the first breath of it. But after a long chat with Cliffe in the evening I grew cheerfuller. The sun was sinking in splendour: the dark blue sea ran in frothing lines; the brig was sailing swiftly, heeling down and smoking onwards as though, like something living, she blew the breath of life in steam from the nostrils of her hawsepipes as she fled. Every hour of such progress shortened the term of expectation; all might yet be well; I could not but reflect that, until the worst was known, the best might most rationally be hoped for. I had come to Cape Town thinking to find my sweetheart dead; it was not she that lay there. Though we should board the wreck and find nobody in her, still I should have a right to believe that the three had been rescued, and perhaps at that very time were at home in safety.