Ephraim Brown, but we found her at last, introduced
ourselves, broke to her as gently as possible the news of her husband's
death, and then unfolded to her the story of the pearls. What between
the news of her loss, and that of the enormous wealth coming to her
through her late husband's good fortune, the poor old soul was driven
nearly crazy for a time; but she was a woman of strong common sense and
a wonderfully practical turn of mind, and in the course of three or four
days she rallied her faculties sufficiently to decide that she would put
the whole of her affairs in the hands of a firm of lawyers of undoubted
integrity, which, we agreed with her, was about the wisest thing she
could do. Accordingly we handed over the pearls to them, leaving them
to arrange the complicated question of duty, etcetera, and left
Baltimore for England after a stay of just a fortnight. During our
sojourn in Baltimore a heavy easterly gale had swept the Atlantic for a
full week; then came a spell of fine weather and moderate westerly
winds, which carried us clean across the "Pond" in twenty-two days, our
arrival at Southampton, "all well", occurring on 27 August, 1864.

Of course I was now a rich man, and did not need to trouble myself about
completing my indentures, or obtaining another berth; but I nevertheless
made a point of reporting myself at the offices in London of the owners
of the _Zenobia_, where I was very cordially received. And here I had
the satisfaction of learning, first, that the _Zenobia's_ longboat had
been picked up within twelve hours by a homeward-bound ship from
Calcutta, thanks to which fortunate circumstance Captain Roberts's life
had been saved--as well as those of all the other occupants of the boat;
and he was now as well as ever, and again in command of his ship, which
had been captured some seven weeks after the occurrence of the mutiny,
following upon an unsuccessful attempt to "hold up" an Australian
clipper, in which attempt Bainbridge, the instigator of the mutiny, had
been shot dead.

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