secret. However, she does adhere obstinately, and hopefully for us, to
her original hint, 'you are not what he thinks you;' although she will
not condescend to any single proof, or explanation, against the mighty
mass of evidence, which probabilities, and common rumour, and the
general's own belief, have heaped together. When I call you Emmy,
too--the old soul, in her broad Scotch way, always corrects me, and
invokes a blessing upon 'A-amy:' so there is a mystery somewhere: at
least, I fervently hope there is: and, if the old woman has been playing
us false, let us resign ourselves to God, my girl; for our fate will be
that matters are as people say they are--and then my old black
postscript ends too truly with a wo, wo, wo--!

"But I must shake off all this lethargy of gloom, dearest, dearest
girl--how can I dare to call you so? Let me, therefore, rush for comfort
into other thoughts; and tell you at once of the fearful dangers we have
now mercifully escaped; for the Samarang lies like a log in this
friendly port, dismasted, and next to a wreck.

"I proceed to show you about it; perhaps I shall be tedious--but I do it
as a little rest, my own soul's love, from anxious, earnest,
heart-distracting prayers continually, continually, that the sorrow
which I spoke of be not true. Sometimes, a light breaks in, and I
rejoice in the most sanguine hope: at others, gloom--

"But a truce to all this, I say. Here shall follow didactically the
cause why the good ship Samarang is not by this time in the Docks.

"We were lying somewhere about the tropical belt, Capricorn you know,
(O, those tender lessons in geography, my Emmy!) quite becalmed; the sea
like glass, and the sky like brass, and the air in a most stagnant heat: