u?"

And then to think of O'Sullivan doing the same for me, with:

"The poor Commanther! Look at him there. Faith, he's keeping a good
heart, isn't he? But it's just destroyed he is for want of news of a
great friend that was in trouble. It was a girl . . . a lady, I mane.
You haven't heard the whisper of a word, sir . . . eh?"

Our chairman had heard nothing. And when (bracing myself at last) I
asked point-blank if anything had been sent to him as from me, and he
answered "No," I might have been relieved, but I wasn't. Though I did
not know then that my darling had burnt my letter, I began to feel that
she was the last person in the world to use it, being (God bless her!)
of the mettle that makes a woman want to fight her own battles without
asking help of any one.

This quite crushed down my heart, for, seeing that she had sent no reply
to my cables, I could not find any escape from the conclusion that she
was where no word could come from her--she was dead!

Lord God, how I suffered when this phantom got into my mind! I used to
walk up and down the promenade deck late into the night, trying and
condemning myself as if I had been my own judge and jury.

"She is dead. I have killed her," I thought.

Thank God, the phantom was soon laid by the gladdest sight I ever saw on
earth or ever expect to see, and it wouldn't be necessary to speak of it
now but for the glorious confidence it brought me.

It was the same with me as with a ship-broken man whom Providence comes
to relieve in his last extremity, and I could fix the place of mine as
certainly as if I had marked it on a chart. We had called at Gibraltar
(where O'Sullivan had received a letter from his mother, saying she was
splendid) and were running along the coast of Portugal.

It was a dirty black night, with intervals of rain, I remember. While my
shipmates were making cheerful times of it in the smoke-room (O'Sullivan
with heart at ease singing the "Minsthrel Boy" to a chorus of noisy
cheers) I was walking up and down the deck with my little stock of
courage nearly gone, for turn which way I would it was dark, dark, dark,
when just as we picked up the lights of Finisterre something said to me,
as plainly as words could speak:

"What in the name of thunder are you thinking about? Do you mean to say
that you were turned back in the 88th latitude, and have been hurried
home without the loss of a moment, only to find everything over at the
end of your journ