‘It puts a new pulse into my heart to hear you talk so,’ said I. ‘I want to conduct you home to your mother’s side out of this wild adventure, with the same beauty and health that you brought away from England with you. It grieved me to the soul to see you refusing food, to watch your face growing hollow, to hear of your sleepless nights, and to witness in your eyes the misery that was consuming you. Pray keep this steadfastly in mind—that every day shortens our run to the South Pacific, and that every day this horrible experience is lessened by twenty-four hours. Whether there be gold in the island or not, whether the island have existence or not, the crew must still be dependent upon me to carry them to a port, and the port that is good for them will be good for us; for it will be strange if from it we are unable to proceed straight home. All along I have said it is but a question of patience and waiting, and God alone can tell how grateful I shall be to you if you will enable me to play the part that I know _must_ be played if our safety is to be worth a rushlight.’ From this time she showed herself a thoroughly resolved woman. She ceased to tease me with regrets, to distress me with inquiries which I could not answer, to imply by her silence or her sighs or looks of reproach that I had it in my power by some other sort of policy than what I was pursuing, to get her safely away out of the barque. With this new mind in her came a subtle but appreciable change in her manner towards me. Heretofore her behaviour had been uniformly haunted by some small flavour more or less defined of her treatment of me, and indeed of all others, saving Mr. Colledge, aboard the Indiaman. She had suggested, though perhaps without intending it, a sort of condescension in our quiet hours, with a deal of haughtiness and almost contemptuous command in moments when she was wrought up by alarm and despair. I now found a kind of yielding in her, a compliance, a complaisance that was almost tender, a subdued form of expression, no matter what the mood might be which our conversation happened to excite in her. At times I would observe her watching me with an expression of sweetness in her fine eyes, though these sudden discoveries never betrayed her into the least air of confusion or embarrassment upon which I might found a hope that I was slowly making my way to her heart.