“What you yell for? Charlie, ask him whaffo him sing.”
“I tink-um ship,” answered Charlie calmly, looking out over the starboard quarter.
“Ship!”
“Him velly sick,” hazarded the Chinaman from the ratlines, adding a sentence in Chinese to Charlie.
“He says he tink-um ship sick, all same; ask um something—ship velly sick.”
By this time the Captain, Wilbur, and all on board could plainly make out a sail some eight miles off the starboard bow. Even at that distance, and to eyes so inexperienced as those of Wilbur, it needed but a glance to know that something was wrong with her. It was not that she failed to ride the waves with even keel, it was not that her rigging was in disarray, nor that her sails were disordered. Her distance was too great to make out such details. But in precisely the same manner as a trained physician glances at a doomed patient, and from that indefinable look in the face of him and the eyes of him pronounces the verdict “death,” so Kitchell took in the stranger with a single comprehensive glance, and exclaimed:
“Wreck!”
“Yas, sah. I tink-um velly sick.”
“Oh, go to 'll, or go below and fetch up my glass—hustle!”
The glass was brought. “Son,” exclaimed Kitchell—“where is that man with the brains? Son, come aloft here with me.” The two clambered up the ratlines to the crow's nest. Kitchell adjusted the glass.