‘I wish I had the spirit you ask me to show,’ she said in a low voice. ‘You may have resolved rightly—but this long alienation from home—the misery of this existence—the peril we are in, which every day, which every hour, seems to increase—oh, it is hard to bear! I will endeavour to school myself—I will strive to see with your eyes’—she broke off with a sob. ‘All will come right,’ I exclaimed; ‘it is entirely a question of waiting. Have you patience? Yes—and your patience will keep you hopeful. Trust to me and to my judgment.’ I took her hand in both mine and pressed it. She did not offer to withdraw it. Indeed, it seemed as though she found comfort in the clasp; her hard expression of consternation softened, and her fine eyes took the same air of appeal I had noticed in them when she went below to her cabin. ‘There is yet the chance,’ I said, ‘of my being able to persuade the crew to transfer you to a passing ship. I might indeed,’ I went on, warming up to the fancy, ‘insist upon this as a part of my agreement with them.’ She slightly shook her head and her glance fell. ‘How long will it take us to reach this island?’ she asked, keeping her gaze bent down. ‘Ten or twelve weeks, perhaps.’ She bit her lip to enable her to speak steadily, and said: ‘Supposing there is no gold, what will be done?’ ‘I cannot tell,’ I answered; ‘we may be quite certain that there is no gold. It yet remains to be seen whether even the poor wretch’s island is real.’ ‘If there should be no island, Mr. Dugdale?’ ‘Well, as I just now said, the men will at first suppose me wrong in my navigation, and oblige me to keep on hunting about for a bit. But such a quest will not take long to tire them, and they will probably ask me to carry them on to the coast.’ ‘To what part?’ ‘Valparaiso, probably. That will be a near port in those seas.’ ‘At that rate,’ she exclaimed with an expression of impatience and dismay, ‘we shall be sailing about for five or six months without the least opportunity of my getting on shore, of my returning home, of my being able to obtain a change of dress.’ ‘Providing nothing happens. And even assuming that you are forced to see this adventure out to the bitter end, the worst that befalls you is a disagreeably long divorce from your home, together with such discomforts as you should laugh at when you think of them side by side with the tragedy that this ramble is easily to be worked into.’