"I was sorry to see you so disappointed, sir," said Joe, as they walked the deck together that night, after the Pico Ruivo had sunk into the sea, "but I think it is often better not to get letters when in blue water, for we can't amend evil things then, as we might when ashore; and I had a shipmate, who lost his life through getting one—and out of the smallest post-office in the whole world."
"Where is that, Joe?"
"It is a barrel that swings from the outermost rock of the sheer mountains that overhang the Straits of Magellan, right opposite to La Tierra del Fuego. Every ship passing opens it to place in letters or take them out, and undertakes their transit, if possible. It hangs there at an iron chain, washed, beaten, and battered by wind and storm; but no post-office, even in London, is more secure from robbers. Well, this poor fellow laid well out on the foretopsail yard, while the ship was thrown in the wind, to see what letters were in the barrel. There was but one, and it was for himself. It was from his wife, but was sealed with black. Sitting outside the yard he read it; then a cry escaped him, and falling into the sea between the ship and the rocks he was seen no more. The letter fluttered aft to where I stood near the taffrail. It told poor Bill of his mother's death, months and months before, and the shock had been too much for him. But you have come back to the Amethyst sorely changed, surely Mr. Hampton?"
"How, Joe?"
"Why—all the fun and cheeriness are quite gone out of you."
"They should not, Joe, as there is no reason therefor. But were you ever in love, Joe?"
"Bless my heart, many and many times, as long as my pay lasted, and I had to come aboard again."
"Ah! Joe," said Derval, laughing, "I fear you don't know what love is."
"Don't I, though!" exclaimed old Grummet, as he bit a quid off the twist of pigtail that was always in his right-hand pocket. "I often boast myself as one of the not-to-be-done squadron of the Royal Naval Reserve, Mr. Hampton; yet I am always done brown when I am on shore, which is the reason I generally stick close to the ship, as one can't fall in love when in blue water and the anchor's catted."
"Joe, the love I mean is the merging of your whole existence in that of another; placing every hope and wish on the will of another; living a glad, wild, feverish dream, with the strange sense that without that other all life is worthless."