As Bella walked by her preserver's side she was wondering many things, and especially if he would, indeed, be able now to discover what the fate of the others in the _Emperor_ had been, and, above all, if, by the aid of this boat, he would be enabled to solve for her the question she hourly, momentarily, asked herself by day and night--the question whether there was any hope left of a life of happiness and bliss to be passed by her lover's side, or whether, for her, the future could bring nothing but a joyless, heartbroken existence henceforth. Also, she mused upon one other thing--namely, what Charke was thinking of while, with his eyes never off the incoming boat, he meditated deeply as, from his knit brows and fixed look, she felt sure he was doing. The thoughts, those that actually were in his mind, he would, undoubtedly, not have divulged, even though she had asked him to do so, since they were such as could only have caused grief unspeakable. For he was thinking that, since this quarter-boat had been washed out of the chocks and off the deck into the sea, and had then floated about for forty-eight hours in the neighbourhood previous to being directed by some subtle current to the island, so other things that were on deck would be subject to the same conditions. The bodies of drowned men; the body of her lover! He knew that the sea and its currents and tides work in calm weather with as much regularity as the sun and the moon work in their rising and setting, and, indeed, as the seasons themselves work; and he knew, also, that if Gilbert's body--which was close to where the quarter-boat rested when the ship struck--had been washed into the sea at the same time as it, then it was most probable, nay, almost certain, that it also would come ashore at the same spot and perhaps almost at the same time. What horror, what fresh horror, would that be for this poor devoted girl to experience! For, in his own heart, he never doubted for one moment that somewhere close at hand the body of Gilbert Bampfyld was floating about. The boat was coming very close into the shore now, so close that they could see that one oar was in it, but only one, and that there was nothing else, while they observed, too, that the rudder was not fixed in the braces. Yet that mattered little to Stephen Charke if he could only once get possession of the boat itself, since with one oar on such a glossy sheet of water as this ocean was now, he could propel and steer it easily enough. 'I am glad, thankful, it is coming ashore,' he said now. 'I had thought of swimming out to the ship, only I dreaded the sharks. Little use as one's life may be, one would scarcely care to lose it by the jaws of those brutes.'