"All sons are, I guess," said I. "I have the same trouble on my conscience: we can shake hands on that," Which (oddly enough, perhaps) we did. Amongst the papers we found a considerable sprinkling of photographs; for the most part either of very debonair-looking young ladies or old women of the lodging-house persuasion. But one among them was the means of our crowning discovery. "They're not pretty, are they, Mr. Dodd?" said Nares, as he passed it over. "Who?" I asked, mechanically taking the card (it was a quarter-plate) in hand, and smothering a yawn; for the hour was late, the day had been laborious, and I was wearying for bed. "Trent and Company," said he. "That's a historic picture of the gang." I held it to the light, my curiosity at a low ebb: I had seen Captain Trent once, and had no delight in viewing him again. It was a photograph of the deck of the brig, taken from forward: all in apple-pie order; the hands gathered in the waist, the officers on the poop. At the foot of the card was written, "Brig _Flying Scud_, Rangoon," and a date; and above or below each individual figure the name had been carefully noted. As I continued to gaze, a shock went through me; the dimness of sleep and fatigue lifted from my eyes, as fog lifts in the Channel; and I beheld with startled clearness the photographic presentment of a crowd of strangers. "J. Trent, Master" at the top of the card directed me to a smallish, wizened man, with bushy eyebrows and full white beard, dressed in a frock-coat and white trousers; a flower stuck in his button-hole, his bearded chin set forward, his mouth clenched with habitual determination. There was not much of the sailor in his looks, but plenty of the martinet; a dry, precise man, who might pass for a preacher in some rigid sect; and, whatever he was, not the Captain Trent of San Francisco. The men, too, were all new to me: the cook, an unmistakable Chinaman, in his characteristic dress, standing apart on the poop steps. But perhaps I turned on the whole with the greatest curiosity to the figure labelled "E. Goddedaal, 1st off." He whom I had never seen, he might be the identical; he might be the clue and spring of all this mystery; and I scanned his features with the eye of a detective. He was of great stature, seemingly blonde as a Viking, his hair clustering round his head in frowsy curls, and two enormous whiskers, like the tusks of some strange animal, jutting from his cheeks. With these virile appendages and the defiant attitude in which he stood, the expression of his face only imperfectly harmonised. It was wild, heroic, and womanish-looking; and I felt I was prepared to hear he was a sentimentalist, and to see him weep.