"We braced up our yards and filled away again, and after a few days ran into fine weather and forgot all about the lost passenger, who was duly entered in the log book as lost overboard.
"One day in the tropics the captain gave orders to have the hatches off and let some air into the hold. The last hatch to be removed was the booby hatch aft, an ornamental teakwood affair on which passengers used to sit, and which formed quite a feature of the quarter-deck. As we raised the hatches a peculiarly sickening smell came up from the hold.
"'There's dead rats there, sir, sure,' said the carpenter to me.
"Off came the hatches, and there, to our horror, in the fierce sunlight of the tropics, with everything bright and gay about us—children laughing and playing, every one happy—we disclosed the bloated and composed corpse of the young man in the brown ulster. By his side was a broken case of wine, and two or three empty bottles, showing plainly how he had died.
"The problem of how he got into the hold was soon solved. There was a large brass ventilator just abaft the main fife-rail, and knowing that drink was stowed down there he had lowered himself down to get it.
"On my arrival in the Thames our long-looked-for mail was brought on board by our agents. Among the first letters I opened was one bearing the Melbourne post-mark. I opened it hurriedly, for I was anxious for news. It was from a stranger, simply inclosing a newspaper paragraph:
"'On Sunday last at No.— Street, East Melbourne, Fanny, only daughter of Thomas , Esq., died, of inflammation of the lungs.'
"My mind rushed back to the night off Cape Horn when I had seen her face in the moonlight. I turned the leaves of the log-book and there, on the same date
