rim to Stromness; we might
also have given to her crew, or what remained of them, the decent
burial for which they had waited so long. But, as things stood, I
should have been thankful if I could have simply foreseen the
possibility of getting out of my position of difficulty, regardless
of either vessel. The sight of those dead bodies on the Pilgrim had
made me utterly downcast. Their terrible fate had suggested to me
the uncertainty of my own.

When I had taken some breakfast, I again went aboard the Pilgrim. I
discovered that her cargo consisted for the most part of sulphur.
Now, sulphur I knew to be a product of Iceland, and I judged from
this that the ship had touched at that northern island.

I went into the chart room. A couple of charts were spread out on a
couch. One of them was a chart of the north of Scotland, including
the Orkney and Shetland Islands; the second was a continuation of
the first, and gave the whole coast of Iceland and the sea beyond
as high as the seventy-seventh degree of north latitude. The ship's
course was clearly traced upon the charts in lines of red ink, and,
following it, I could see that the Pilgrim (sailing, I suppose,
from Bristol or some other English port) had rounded Cape Wrath and
gone in at Kirkwall, in the Orkneys; thence the course was
continued in a regular zigzag northward to a port on the north of
Iceland, and then due east, as though she had been making for
Scandinavia. But here the line became broken and irregular, and
swept round suddenly to the far northwest, as though the vessel had
been carried away by some adverse current or contrary wind away
into the Arctic seas.

Here, then, I had a rough sort of explanation of the Pilgrim's
voyage.

I was leaving the captain's room, taking the charts with me, when,
on giving a last look round, I noticed a sleeping berth curtained
off by a plaid shawl. I drew the curtain aside, and saw something
sparkling. It was a beautiful diamond ring that encircled one of
the fingers of a man's thin white hand. The hand was clasped over
some small object that I did not see. Turning down a heavy fur rug
that covered the man's dead body I noticed that his clothing, his
appearance generally, were not those of a seaman. He had a long,
silky, brown beard, and a very handsome face, which, however, was
marred by an ugly scar on the brow. I judged him to be about
thirty-five years old. Lying on his breast was a thick notebook,
which, on openi