“Ay, Jim,” growled the carpenter, “I’ve seen her this hour an’ more. Ye may come down an’ get on wi’ your work, my lad; you’ll get a good enough view of her from the deck afore long.”
At eight bells the carpenter went below and called Leslie, who had been lying down in his cabin, and at the same time reported the sighting of the wreck, which was by this time clearly visible from the deck, except when hidden from time to time by an intervening mound of swell. Knowing exactly where to look, Leslie caught sight of her immediately over the lee cathead, the instant that he stepped out on deck. She was by this time about half a mile distant, and clearly distinguishable as a craft of some six hundred tons register. She was submerged almost to her covering-board, and the whole of her bulwarks being gone between her topgallant forecastle and long full poop, the sea was making a clean breach right over her main deck, leaving little to be seen above water but a short length of her bows and about three times as much of her stern. Seen through the powerful lenses of the brig’s telescope, Leslie made out that she had once been a full-rigged ship, and from the little that showed above water he judged her to be American-built. Her three masts were gone by the board, also her jib-booms, which were snapped close off by the bowsprit end. There was no sign of any floating wreckage alongside her, from which Leslie was led to surmise that her masts must have been cut away; a circumstance that, in its turn, pointed to the conclusion that she had been hove over on her beam-ends—probably by a sudden squall—and had refused to right again. But what had become of the crew? A glance at the craft’s davits answered that question. There were no boats to be seen, while the davit-tackles were overhauled and the blocks in the water. This clearly pointed to the fact that the boats had been lowered; the presumption therefore was that the crew had abandoned the craft, fearing that she was about to founder. Nevertheless, the weather being fine, and the condition of the sea such that the craft could be boarded without much danger or difficulty, Leslie determined to give her an overhaul; and accordingly the brig, having by this time arrived almost directly to windward of the seeming derelict, he gave orders to back the main-yard, and instructed the carpenter to take the lee quarter-boat, with three hands, and go on board.
“Well, Miss Trevor,” said Leslie, as the two stood together near the binnacle, watching the boat rising and falling like a cork over the long hummocks of swell as she swept rapidly down toward the wreck, “what think you of that for a sight? Is it not a very perfect picture of ruin and desolation? A few days ago—it can scarcely be more—that craft floated buoyantly and all ataunto, ‘walking the waters like a thing of life,’ her decks presenting an animated picture of busy activity, as her crew went hither and thither about their several tasks; while yonder poop, perchance, was gay with its company of passengers whiling away the time with books, games, or flirtations, according to their respective inclinations. And over all towered the three masts, lofty and symmetrical, with all their orderly intricacy of standing and running rigging, and their wide-spreading spaces of snow-white canvas; the whole combining to make up as stately and beautiful a picture as a sailor’s eye need care to rest upon. And now look at her! There she lies, clean shorn of every vestige of those spacious ‘white wings,’ that imparted life and grace to her every movement; her decks tenantless and wave-swept; her hull full of water, and the relentless sea leaping at her with merciless persistency, as though eager to drag her down and overwhelm her! Can you conceive a more sorrowful picture?”
“I could, perhaps; although I grant you that it must be difficult to imagine any sight more grievous than that to a sailor’s eye,” answered the girl, gazing upon the scene with eyes wide and brilliant with interest and excitement. “How fearlessly that little boat seems to dance over those huge waves! She reminds me of one of those birds—Mother Carey’s chickens, I think they are called—that one reads about as sporting fearlessly and joyously on the tops of the wave-crests during the height of the fiercest storms. Ah, now they have reached her,” she continued, clasping her hands on her breast unconsciously as she watched the wild plunges of the boat compared with the deadly slow heave of the water-logged hulk. “Oh, Mr Leslie, how could you order those men to undertake so desperately dangerous a task? They will never do it; they cannot; their boat will be dashed to pieces against that great, ponderous wreck!”
“Never fear,” responded Leslie, cheerfully; “Chips knows what he is about. See, there; how keenly he watched for his chance, and how neatly he took it when it came. He saw that rope’s-end hanging over the stern long before he came to it, you may depend; and now inboard he goes, and there he stands on the poop without so much as a touch of the boat against the wreck. And there goes the boat round into the sheltered lee of the hull, where she will lie quite comfortably. And thither we will go, too, in readiness to pick them up when they shove off again.”
The brig bore up and, wearing round, came-to again quite close under the lee of the wreck; so close, indeed, that it was quite easy to see with the unassisted eye everything that was going on aboard her, as well as to obtain a more comprehensive and detailed view of the havoc that had been wrought on her by the combined effects of wind and sea.
Their attention, however, was for the moment attracted rather to what was happening on board, than to the condition of the wreck herself; Miss Trevor being an especially interested spectator. After all, it was not very much: simply this, that under the lee of a hencoop on the poop, that had somehow resisted the onslaughts of the sea, Chips had discovered a very fine Newfoundland dog crouching—or perhaps lying exhausted; and he was now endeavouring to induce the animal to leave his shelter with the view of coaxing him into the boat. But for some reason or other the brute refused to move, responding to the carpenter’s blandishments only by a feeble intermittent beating of his tail upon the deck.
“Oh,” exclaimed Miss Trevor, when she grasped the state of affairs, “I hope he will be able to rescue the poor creature! He is a beautiful animal; and I am so fond of dogs.”
“What is the matter with him, Chips? Won’t he trust you?” hailed Leslie, sending his powerful voice to windward through the palms of his hands.
The carpenter stood up and faced about. “Seems to be pretty nigh starved, so far as I can make out, sir,” he replied. “The poor beggar’s just nothin’ but skin and bone, and too weak to stand, by the looks of ’im.”