I sank into a deep reflection over what had passed since yester-morning. Did I feel grateful for the mercies vouchsafed--mercies linked like miracles, so wonderfully and inexpressibly fortunate to us had the incidents since the outbreak proved in their succession down to this, our lighting upon an equipped, well-stocked, sound, and abandoned vessel? I fear I was not grateful. I did not lift up my heart in a single syllable of thanks. My spirit was savage with memory, spite of our gracious and consoling fortune; my passion for Tom overmastered me; as he felt, so I felt; what was in his mind that I could find in his eyes and speech instantly filled and possessed my own mind. Had he knelt in prayer I should have knelt; but he had told Mr. Bates that gratitude lay dead in him, so it slept in me. Luck had befallen us; but so much had gone before which was not luck, except it were of the devil’s sort, that I raged when I thought of it, and felt that nothing ever could happen good enough to thank Heaven for. Will, who acted as cook this first morning, prepared a tolerable breakfast. Coffee had been found and marmalade; the lad fried a dish of the _Childe Harold’s_ ham, and these things with biscuit and sugar furnished us with a meal. The provisions we had brought with us from the convict ship had been stowed by Bates and Tom in the store-room. Had we met with nothing on board, that stock we had come with would have lasted a month or six weeks. I spied three eggs amongst the dead hens in the coop, and told Mr. Bates of them; they were the last efforts of the poor, unhappy, starved poultry. The mate wondered that the rats had spared them and the birds. He picked them up and Will cooked them, and they proved--ah! I laughed to see Mr. Bates holding his nose and throwing the cocks and hens overboard; such work fitted ill with the dignity of a man who was just now chief officer of one of the finest of the Blackwall liners. That we might break our fast together whilst one of us steered, the dishes and cups were set upon the deck and we used our knees for tables. The brig went along so quietly that you could let go of the wheel for minutes at a time, without a quarter-point of deflection in the compass bearing. We were hungry and thirsty; the boat’s sail overhead cast a pleasant shade upon us; the breeze blew through the little gangway on either hand of the house and fanned us whilst we breakfasted. Mr. Bates and Will talked much of the convict ship, of the chance of her people, and the like. Tom sat quiet, and I thought moody. Often he fastened his eyes upon me, but with a look as though he saw something beyond. I feared that he was overwrought and dead wearied, and I longed to pillow his head on my arm that I might watch him sleeping. All on a sudden he flushed up and, with a hard, small, satiric smile, whilst his eyes seemed to brighten into fire as though taking light from the contrast of the blood in his cheeks, he cried: