The man stared stupidly and lounged off.
'You gittee on board, boss,' said one of the boatmen. 'You hab welcome allee same as other gents,'
I took the man's advice, and putting my foot on to the shelf or projection of main channels, sprang and gained the deck in a jump from the bulwark rail.
There were probably twenty men lounging forward in every imaginable posture, smoking and talking; they were black and yellow and some were of the white man's bronze, long-haired, beards goat-shaped, the figure of them striking, with grass hats, dungaree trousers, brown shanks, and shirts of several dyes exposing their furry breasts. They took no notice of me whatever. The decks were dark with dirt: insufferably heaped up with caboose, boats, casks, pumps, and some midship arrangement for boiling blubber. A smell of greese hung cold and nasty in the atmosphere.
I faced aft, and was moving that way when a tall figure rose through the deck from under a sort of wooden hood which yawned at the wheel. I instantly guessed him the captain by the colonel's description; he was lean and hollow, with high cheek bones and a clean shaven face, yellow as any of his men forward, buttoned up in an old frock coat, and he wore a grey wideawake, the brim turned down. His eye came to me without any expression of interest; I judged by his manner his ship had been much visited.
I went straight up to him, and lifting my cap asked him if he was the master of this barque.
'I am,' he replied, with the usual American drawl.
'I have come off,' said I, 'to speak with you on a matter of the deepest interest to myself. I just now met a gentleman who told me that south of the Horn you sighted a large hull, high and dry upon the ice. Last July a ship named the "Lady Emma" was dismasted and abandoned by her crew who left three people aboard: the men quitted her much about the spot where you sighted the wreck. One of the people remaining in her was Captain Burke, her commander; the others were his wife and a young lady named Miss Otway. I was engaged to be married to that young lady, sir, and came here, having arrived from England on the thirteenth, believing that a body which had been found at sea and brought to Cape Town was Miss Otway's. It is not so. The remains are not hers. God knows but that, if the hull you sighted be the "Lady Emma," the three may be living—aboard—in a hopeless state! Will you tell me all you can recollect of her appearance and situation?'
In speaking I had insensibly worked myself up, and ended with my voice broken by agitation. He looked me steadily in the face, and when I had ended, after a minute's silence, said:
'Friend, follow me into the cabin, and I'll tell thee all I know.'