Whitney imagined it to be a perch, a spar built into a pile of stones for a beacon. He did not expect to find anything of interest there, but the pole had been raised by human hands, and made a landmark in the storm-swept waste. It brought him into touch with his fellow men in a spot where the strife of wind and sea was daunting. As they got nearer, however, he saw that he had been mistaken. The pole was too thick for a perch, and the black mass below did not consist of stones. Jagged timbers stuck out from the sand like the ribs of a skeleton, but in one place they were clothed with planks and supported a mast. It was obviously a wreck they were approaching.
They stopped to lee of the vessel, and Whitney was glad to get his breath as he studied her. She appeared to have been a schooner of about two hundred tons, but her after part and mainmast were gone. The fore end, however, had escaped destruction, and although the foremast slanted ominously and the topmast and yards had fallen, it still defied the storms. Standing beneath the swell of the bows, the men were out of the wind and could make their voices heard.
"Now I see why I didn't notice a perch on the chart, though I once saw the spar as we came down this side of the Firth," Whitney said. "It's curious they didn't mark the wreck."
"She wasn't here when the last survey was made. A coaster loaded with coal. Somebody tried to get her cargo out, but I understand had to give it up."
Whitney had got his breath, but was silent for a time. He had camped in the silent Canadian forests and by frozen lakes on the vast snowy plains, but he did not think he ever had seen anything so savage and desolate as this strip of surf-beaten sand with the wreck in its midst. Men had hewn her timbers with skilful toil; but the sea had shattered them, and now seemed to challenge all attempts to dispute its power. Whitney was not unduly imaginative, but he felt depressed and somewhat daunted. It was an eerie spot to linger in at midnight in a gale of wind.
"The fo'castle doesn't seem broken up. Can we get on board?" he said.
"We'll try," Andrew replied.
Climbing up by the fragments of planking attached to a rib, they reached a strip of deck. It sloped sharply, but Andrew, grasping the ragged bulwark, looked up.
"The iron forestay's holding the mast, and there's a couple of blocks slung round the top," he said. "If it wasn't blowing quite so hard, I'd go up for them." Then he caught a thin rope that ran down from the blocks. "Good signal-halyard; I'd like to take it back, but I didn't bring my knife."
Whitney felt amused. Andrew could seldom resist the temptation of picking up anything that might be of use on board his yacht. Indeed, her forecastle was cumbered with what Whitney called truck.