'His is a dry old mind,' said I, 'tough as sailor's beef, with the pickle of his experiences.'
'He was telling me last night, Mr. Moore,' said the captain, 'that you're interested in the loss of the "Lady Emma."'
'I have asked him, as a seaman, questions on the subject,' said I.
'I read the account of her being dismasted in one of the papers,' he exclaimed. 'It was made a bad job of, I thought, by three people being left aboard the hull, two of them women. D'ye ever see the "Shipping Gazette"?'
'No.'
'In a number of it a week or two before we sailed, there was a strange piece quoted out of a Cape paper.'
'A strange piece?' I exclaimed, scarcely understanding the expression. 'Had it anything to do with the "Lady Emma"?'
'Why, no,' he answered, leaning upon the rail and looking with a seaman's level, steady gaze at the orange-coloured sail on the horizon, talking carelessly, in evident intention to amuse me merely, 'a large three-masted schooner picked up the body of a woman much about the parts where the hull of the "Lady Emma" was washing about. The master took it to be the corpse of the wife of a friend of his, and put it into brine or spirit to preserve it for Christian interment ashore. A queer item of cargo, little relished by the jacks in the schooner, I warrant ye! And yet handsomely done, too, on the part of the master, if you think of it; for suppose one dear to you drowned, what would you give that the remains should be buried with a memorial atop? That's always the feeling along-shore, even amongst the humblest; they'll offer pounds reward for the body. It's sentiment—and only to bury it in earth after all; as if this,' said he, waving his hand, 'wasn't the freshest, the most spacious, the most splendid of all cemeteries, every white curl of sea a tombstone, and God's voice in the wind to keep ye sleeping and comforted.'
I listened in silence, but intently.
'The schooner carried the body to the Cape,' he went on, 'where of course it was promptly buried after they had photographed the poor thing.'