Picked up Adrift / Illustrated

by James De Mille

At length they went back to the place where the Petrel lay. On reaching it they found that a marked change had taken place. Thus far, though low in the water, she had always preserved a certain symmetry of outline; and to those who might stand on her deck in fine weather and smooth water she seemed quite uninjured. But now her decks appeared to be burst open; she seemed broken in two. Bow and stern were low under water, while amidships she was above it. The mainmast inclined forward, and the foremast sloped back so far that they almost touched. Where she had parted asunder the planks of the decks had also started, and as the waves rolled over her, every new assault increased the ruin.

“She’s hogged,” said Bart.

“She’s worse than hogged,” said Bruce; “she’s completely broken in two.”

“She’s fallen upon some ridge of rock,” said Phil, “and the weight of her cargo has done it.”

“Deed thin, an the waves have had somethin to do with that same,” said Pat; “and glad am I that we’re all out of her, so I am; and lucky it was for us that she didn’t go ashore on that same reef, the night of the starrum.”

The boys looked on in silence. The work of destruction went on slowly, but surely, before their very eyes. Each wave did something towards hastening the catastrophe. That the Petrel was doomed was now beyond the possibility of doubt.

Rocks were beneath her, and never-ending billows rolled over her, making her their prey.

At length the fore part of the ship rolled over, with the deck towards them, severing itself completely from the other half. The decks gaped wide, and opened; the sides started: the foremast came down with a crash, and the pitiless waves, rolling on incessantly, flung themselves one after the other upon the wreck. The two parts were soon completely severed, the fore part breaking up first, the other half resisting more obstinately; while the sea was covered with sticks of timber that were torn out from her and flung away upon the face of the waters.

At length the ruin of the fore part was completed, and that part of the ship, all torn asunder, with all that part of the cargo, was dissipated and scattered over the water and along the beach. The other half still clung together, and though sorely bruised and shaken, seemed to put forth an obstinate resistance. At every touch of the waves it rolled over only to struggle back; it rose up, but was flung down again upon the rocks; it seemed to be writhing in agony. At length the mainmast went down with a crash, followed not long after by the mizzenmast. Then the fragment of the ship suddenly split, and the entire quarterdeck was raised up. Here the waves flung themselves, tearing it away from the hull. But before the quarter-deck was altogether severed, the rest of the ship gave way, and parted in all directions. One by one the huge timber logs were detached from her cargo; the separation of the parts of the ship, and the dissolution of her compact cargo, gave a greater surface to the action of the waves, which now roared, and foamed, and boiled, and seethed, and flung themselves in fury over every portion of the disordered, swaying, yielding mass. Fragment after fragment was wrenched away; bit by bit the strong hull crumbled at the stroke of the mighty billows. The fragments were strewn afar over the sea, and along the beach; and the boys saw the mizzen-top, where they had found refuge on that eventful night, drifting away towards the headland. At length all was over; and in place of the Petrel there remained nothing but a vast mass of fragments, strewing the rocky shore, and floating over the sea for many a mile.

All this, however, was the work of hours. The boys watched it all as though they were held to the spot by a species of fascination. There seemed to be a spell upon them. They could not tear themselves away. But at last there was nothing left; nothing but floating fragments; or timbers flung by the waves on the shore, with which the waves seemed to play, as they hurled them forward and drew them back; while of the Petrel herself there was no sign—no coherent mass, however battered and beaten, which might serve to be pointed out as the representative of the ship that once bore them all. Of that ship there was nothing left; she was dissolved; she was scattered afar; she was no more. Such was the end of the Petrel.