“The English merchant especially,” says Esquiros, in his charming work, “having so many bonds of union with the ocean, can hardly expect to always have tranquil sleep. Let the south-west squalls be ever so little let loose, the ruin of his house and family is hoarsely muttered through his dreams. Oh, if he could only see from afar the good ship in which he has risked the better part of his fortune! In the morning he rushes to Lloyd’s, the fountain-head of all marine news. Nothing, either in his face or conduct, shows the least emotion—he has the art of veiling his features with a mask of indifference; but what a tempest of anxiety rages under this outward calm! He asks himself a thousand questions: What does the telegraph say? What ships have touched at distant ports? What are the names of those which have reached England? To all these questions and many more he finds answers affixed to the walls of the vestibule. There the lists and advices give exactly the maritime bulletin of the day. But the critical moment has yet to come; this man, whose whole fortune perhaps is on the sea, has not at present consulted the ‘Loss Book,’ or, as it is also called, the ‘Black Book.’” This gloom-inspiring volume is placed by itself on a high desk, and each can refer to it in turn. It is, of course, written by hand, and contains every day the wreck record, briefly told. Laconic as is the formal record—the name of the ship, destination, nature of cargo, coast on which shipwrecked, and so forth—there have been as many as twelve pages blackened with the sad summary of the losses announced by telegraph during one day. “In each of these announcements—frigid and taciturn as fate itself—the mind may conjure up many a sad drama. How many human lives are there sacrificed? This is often the fact of which the ‘Black Book’ takes but little notice; the matter with which it has exclusively to deal is the property insured against the perfidy of the sea. Who was the insurer? and who has lost? These are the great questions. It is also remarkable, after a storm, to see with what anxious and fidgety hands some of the insurance speculators turn over the pages of this sibylline book.” And no wonder: for the underwriter(40) is a speculator who is taking long odds against a terrible gambler—the ocean.