But although they started soon after daybreak, the sun was gilding the brown ocean before they had accomplished two-thirds of the journey towards the derelict.
There was nothing for it, therefore, but to sup and to sleep till morning.
Though there was no moon, the night was charming and the stars never so bright, and apparently so close that a ship’s masts might have touched them.
The constellations were especially beautiful and bright.
The silence for the most part was like that of death. Yet it was broken now and then by plaintive and uncanny screams, dying away at last in mournful cadence that touched the heart. These, as I have said before, were put down to the credit of night-birds, or to a fish called by Antonio “the piping shark.”
Towards morning something, or rather some creature, struck the bottom of the boat with such violence that she was all but capsized.
She yielded to the blow, else she would doubtless have been stove. No one could even surmise what they had come into collision with, though no doubt it was some species of monster shark. Next day the voyage was resumed. During their slow progress, Barclay had much time to study the weeds that floated close aboard of them, and the myriads of small but active creatures that lived on the surface of this strange mysterious sea.
Towards noon a flock of sea-birds of every description, some entirely unknown even to Antonio, came shrieking and screaming round the boat.
A few minutes after this they were close alongside one of the most dismal-looking derelicts it has ever been the lot of human eyes to look upon.
A veritable coffin afloat she turned out to be, a ship of the dead.