But then—but then—and my heart ached again as I reflected; it was in July that her ship was dismasted and last heard of, and this was December, almost the middle of it—five whole months! And the hard part was that I should have to live through another interminable period of expectation before reaching home, where alone I must hope to get news. Why, even whilst I sat there, with the two Atlantics between England and me, she might have arrived, or they might have got news that she was coming, and thus was I sure to go on thinking and hoping until I returned—when they would tell me they had heard nothing!
My thoughts went but seldom and lightly to the body of the girl who was resting in her grave somewhere past those trees yonder. She was not Marie. I'd look upon her if the coffin was lifted and Hoskins invited me; but she was not Marie! The wonder and pity of her to my mind now that I had seen the photographs lay in the coincidence of her discovery, and in the ghastly vision of her floating figure—so young and fair as she had been—a fancy of ocean loneliness I could somehow realise better here than at sea, maybe because of the height the lofty shadow of the mountain sent the stars to, its blotting presence widening the scene of heaven by exciting imagination of the magnitude of the hidden slope going over and past it to Agulhas and to where the ice was.
After this, for two or three days, I went about alone, struggling with a mood of depression that discoloured everything I beheld. It robbed all grace of freshness from the beauty and the splendour of the sights which lay about me. My favourite haunt was the waterside, where I'd stand watching the Atlantic comber form, huge and polished, out of the silken swell, arching and rushing onwards in a sparkling bravery of foam and sunlight; but my thoughts were always with Marie, and again and again I'd catch myself sighing as I brought my eyes away from the remote blue distance pass Robben Island.
It was on the fourth day of my arrival, in the afternoon, that strolling slowly under the shade of an umbrella from that part of the waterside close to where the docks now are, I met the colonel who lodged with me in the boarding-house. He turned from gazing at the bay under the sharp of his hand, and approached me.
'Were you ever aboard a whaler?' he asked.
'Never,' I answered.
'That ship yonder's a whaler,' said he pointing.
'Yes, I know,' I replied. 'I had a good look at her from the side of the steamer—we lay within a biscuit-toss.'
'I went aboard of her this morning,' said he, causing me to stop by halting and looking towards the vessel as though he would have me observe her whilst he talked. 'She is well worth a visit. Half of her crew are Kanakas, and the remainder Yankees, and a wild, queer, hairy lot they are. The captain's a Quaker, a strange, tall, formal fellow, buttoned up, lean and yellow, and thee's and thou's you; most unlike a seaman of any I ever saw. He was very civil though, mighty communicative. I sat an hour in his little cabin and 'twas as good as going awhaling to hear him. Such an array of harpoons and lances, decks dark with the mess of blubber boiling—'trying out' the captain called it. If you want to agreeably pass an hour and forget that you're in a land of smells and noise, visit her.'