We had both of us a thousand things to ask and answer, and often we'd break off to gaze at each other, scarce realising even yet that we were together, and that the end of my heaven-directed quest was come. By the time we had settled down into sober talk, sitting hand in hand in front of the glowing brass stove, whilst the boy in obedience to my orders was preparing the table for dinner, it was about five o'clock; they had got way upon the brig; she was heeling over, and I guessed that Cliffe was pressing her, getting every inch of northing that was to be clawed out of the bow surge whilst it was daylight. The afternoon was glowing with more than tropic splendour; indeed, never had I observed such mellow richness of glory under the line, or north or south of 23° as I had noticed in this Antarctic sunshine whilst in the bay. But however delivered--whispered at times--sometimes interrupted by tears, by sudden impassioned embraces, as though nothing even now could be true but the presence and reality of the long months of her imprisonment; but however brokenly uttered, I say her story was known, and her relation persuaded me that in the person of Mr. Selby lived one of the finest characters that ever graced the manliest of all the callings. My love, my joy--though my spirits seemed to know no other passions whilst I held her and looked at her--did not extinguish in me for long whilst we conversed the cold dark dread that lurked in the thought of her having been locked up with Selby for months. But whilst I listened the jealous fear, the gloomy dislike for the extraordinary association vanished. My heart grew hot with admiration and gratitude. She told me of her joy at the sight of him, when, after being alone for a week in the dismasted hull of the 'Lady Emma' with no other companion on board than the dead body of Mrs. Burke, she groped her way from her berth to the cabin and found him lying asleep on a locker. She told me how he had comforted her and raised her spirits by every hope that a sailor could invent. She instanced many fine subtle, delicate traits of conduct; I was impressed by the refinement and native exquisite breeding of the man whilst I listened to her. I witnessed the gentleman, the nobleman of nature's own handiwork, in all she told me of him. Without his inspiring companionship her spirits would have sunk, her heart must have broken. He fetched and carried, cooked, and toiled for her comfort; he devised a dozen schemes to divert her. Every day he promised that a ship would come to take them off. He never lost heart. Often he would sing with a sailor's notion of brightening her melancholy.