No one intruded upon us, saving the boy; but our talk was not to be overheard by him, sitting as we did close together beside the fire. And all the while I was admiring the improved sweetness of her looks, the plumpness of her cheeks and throat, the firmer, clearer tones of her voice, and what shone to my sight as a soft gay light of health in her eyes. 'Is it the ice,' said I, 'that has worked this miracle of change in you? Or were you looking even better than you now do before your shipwreck?' 'I cannot tell how I look,' she answered. 'What I have suffered I know.' She talked of the Burkes, and wept when she spoke of her old nurse. She said she believed Captain Burke committed suicide; his end was sudden; he did not need to go upon the bowsprit to hang up the lantern--a height of foremast stood; he went on a dangerous errand, she thought, meaning to die, and his getting his wife to accompany him into the bows might have signified no more than lunatic cunning. Whilst we conversed the boy came down and asked if he should put dinner upon the table. We had forgotten time in talking and I jumped up and took Marie to my berth, which was to be resigned to her. I then went on deck to make Mr. Selby's acquaintance and to bring him into the cabin to dinner. The wind was on the beam, a steady pouring breeze, and the heeling brig was washing onwards, but warily and under little canvas; I had been misled by the angle of the deck. The ice rode lofty and glaring about us on all sides in huge groups; and masses of the stuff littered the ocean directly in our path; the utmost vigilance was needful. I stood a moment in the companion-way, looking at the island we were leaving astern. It was already some miles distant, and the wreck invisible. The far inland mountain hung solemn and sublime in the blue air with the majestic loneliness of it. You thought of it as lifting its height at the extreme end of the world, and the melting of its shimmering peak into the silver azure was such a blending as made the shadow seem as high as the heavens themselves. Cliffe stood in earnest talk with Selby. I regarded the man awhile before he saw me. He was dressed in the plain clothes of his calling; doubtless he made good his wants out of Captain Burke's wardrobe; he was rather short and very broad-shouldered; his hair was black, and of a true cast-away man's length, falling and curling in plenty down upon his back as though it had been a woman's; he was of a sallow complexion and newly bearded as though used to shave when all was well.