The tide was rising and they were able to bring the boat alongside the wreck, by careful steering. The fragment of the steamer was lying almost upon her beam-ends, so that it was possible to grasp her rail by standing up in the boat. The deck was too sharply inclined to stand on it, however, and was besides deeply covered with the droppings of sea-birds. The deck-houses were quite gone, great cracks yawned in the deck-plates, the hatches and companionways were vast gaping holes, while on the other side the deck seemed to have broken entirely clear from the side plates.
“No use in going aboard,” said Bennett, but Hawke scrambled on hands and knees to the companionway hole, and the rest followed him through the filth. The stairs were gone, but they slid easily to the deck below, where, in the low light that entered freely through a score of yawning gaps in her side, they viewed a scene of ruin even more depressing than that upon the deck. Not a trace of man’s occupancy was left. Everything wooden or movable had been swept out by the wind and sea that had raged through and over the wreck, and they could hear the water washing hollowly in the hold below.
There was nothing to tell whether the ship had been visited before them, and there seemed little possibility of settling this great question that night “We might as well go back,” said Elliott, after they had stared at the desolation for a few minutes.
“No, I’m going to have a look into the hold before I sleep,” Hawke insisted, and he began to clamber down the cavernous gulf that led to the interior of the ship.
Henninger, Elliott, and Bennett meanwhile went back to the deck and perched precariously upon the broken rail while they waited for their comrade’s return. Hawke was gone for a long time, however, and at last a sudden outburst of wild shrieks arose from the bowels of the ship.
“He must have got caught somewhere and can’t get back,” exclaimed Elliott, and they returned below hurriedly. They had scarcely reached the lower deck, however, when Hawke reappeared, dripping wet, with his face distorted with some emotion.
“It’s there! It’s there—tons of it!” he cried, and his voice broke on the words. “Come along! I’ll show you!”
They tumbled after him at the risk of breaking their necks, for the iron plates hung in torn flaps, and the ladders were broken or gone. But at last they peered down the hatch. The light was faint, coming principally through the great fissures, but they could dimly make out a heap of miscellaneous freight, cases and hogsheads and crated machinery that had tumbled against the ship’s side when she heeled, and now lay in several feet of water. Some of it had actually fallen through the holes in the bottom that had enlarged with pounding on the rocks, but the upper articles of the mass showed above water. Hawke sprang recklessly down upon the pile, and splashed in to his knees.
“Be careful. You’ll break a leg if you slip on those crates,” Henninger warned him.
But Hawke paid no attention. “This is it!” he shouted, his voice resounding hollowly in the hold. He struck his hand upon a wooden box about three feet in diameter. “It’s stencilled with that corned beef mark, and it’s heavy as lead. You can’t stir it. See!” He strained at the case, which refused to move.