"Mackay," said the mate, with equal positiveness. "And a fine fellow he was, too, and one of the best for cheering of us up with his stories and songs; and not above a bit of a prayer, too, when the worst came to the worst. I heard him myself." "No sign of your friend here, Mr. Heron, I'm afraid," whispered the ship's officer. "I am afraid not. Was there a passenger on board the _Falcon_ called Stretton." "No, sir. I'm sure o' that." "Or--Luttrell?" Percival Heron knew well enough that no such name had been found amongst the list of passengers; but he had a vague notion that Brian might have resumed his former appellation for some reason or other after he came on board. Thomas Jackson considered the subject for a few minutes. "I ain't rightly sure, sir. Seems to me there was a gent of that name, or something like it, on board: but if so, he was amongst those in the other boat." "I should like to see this man Mackay--or Smith," said Percival. The berth in which the steerage passenger lay was pointed out to him: he looked at the face upon the pillow, and shook his head. A rough, reddened, blistered face it was, with dirt grained into the pores and matting the hair and beard: not in the least like the countenance of the man whom he had come to seek. "We may fall in with the other boat," suggested the officer. But though the steamer went out of her course in search of it, and a careful watch was kept throughout the day and night, the other boat could not be seen. CHAPTER XXXVII. WRECKED. Percival cultivated acquaintance with the two sailors, and tried to obtain from them some description of the passengers on board the _Falcon_. But description was not their forte. He gained nothing but a clumsy mass of separate facts concerning passengers and crew, which assisted him little in forming an opinion as to whether Brian Luttrell had, or had not, been on board. He was inclined to think--not. "But he seemed to have a slippery habit of turning up in odd places where you don't in the least expect to find him," soliloquised Percival over a cigar. "Why couldn't he have stayed comfortably dead in that glacier? Or why did the brain fever not carry him off? He has as many lives as a cat. He, drowned or burnt when the _Falcon_ was on fire? Not a bit of it. I'll believe in Mr. Brian Luttrell's death when I have seen him screwed into his coffin, followed him to the grave, ordered a headstone, and written his epitaph. And even then, I should feel that there was no knowing whether he had not buried himself under false pretences, and was, in reality, enjoying life at the Antipodes. I don't know anybody else who can be, 'like Cerberus, three gentlemen at once.' I shall nail him to one _alias_ for the future, if I catch him. But there seems very little chance of my catching him at all. I've come on a wild-goose chase, and can't expect to succeed."