It is almost needless to write down that he found no sign of human life as he rowed about and round the wrecked _Emperor of the Moon_ for some moments afterwards. Needless, too, perhaps, to add that he had never expected to find any. He was a sailor, accustomed to disaster at sea and full also of much acquired knowledge pertaining to many of the calamities which it had never been his lot to experience heretofore; and he knew--he felt sure, and would have staked his life upon the certainty of his convictions--that of all who had been in that doomed ship an hour before she struck, none except Bella Waldron and himself were now alive. Those who had been below in the cabins or saloon, those also who were in forecastle or galley, had met, must have met, not only with their deaths but their graves at one and the same time; while as for the unhappy and blind young officer who had caused him so much heartache by winning the woman whom he loved so fondly, and whom he had once hoped to win--why, it was impossible that he should still be alive. If he had been washed ashore, it could be only as a corpse, and it was most improbable that even that should have happened. In truth, he believed that, with all the others, he had been carried below by the overturning of the ship and then pinned down, buried, beneath the mass of the fabric. Otherwise, since the boat had floated ashore, so, too, would he have done by now. 'The woman he had hoped to win,' he repeated softly to himself, as still he sculled the quarter-boat round and round while peering down into the dark blue depths as far as he could penetrate; and while endeavouring also to perceive some sign or memorial--even so much as a cap or straw hat--of one of those poor drowned sailors imprisoned below--'the woman he had hoped to win!' And as the phrase rose to his mind, though not to his lips, he recalled as well how he had cherished the thought of the length of voyage that had lain before her ere she could join her lover in India; how, too, he had pondered on half a hundred things which might happen ere the old _Emperor_ should be anchored in Bombay harbour. Almost, now, those meditations seemed to have been prophetic--for what had not happened! The girl's lover was gone, removed by death, and she had none other in the world on whom to lean but himself. And what was more, she spoke kindly to him; she pitied him, he could well perceive; there was something between them now, a deep sympathy, a reliance on each other in their misfortunes, which had never existed before.