Had her crew all perished of some terrible disease, or been poisoned by a rascally black cook? If so, terrible sights would await them, of corpses lying about, or festering in bunks and berths. Had there been a mutiny, and had she been scuttled, to sink in time? She did look rather deep in the water, Paul Bitts remarked, adding that she might sink suddenly when they were on board, or alongside, and so carry them down in the vortex she made. Had some dreadful crime compelled her crew to abandon her?
As they neared her, stroke by stroke, the silent, voiceless, and crewless craft, floating in utter silence upon the glassy tropical sea, became an object calculated to impose awe and a solemn sense of great mystery on the boat's crew. At last they were alongside, and as it might have been dangerous to hook on the painter to any part of her, the coxswain held on by boat-hook to the forechains, while with their pulses accelerated by excitement, Paul Bitts and Derval clambered up and leaped on board, the soul of the latter already recoiling within him at anticipation of some sight of horror.
The deck was deserted, but ropes, &c. lay about everywhere in confusion. The longboat was missing, but its chocks remained over the main hatch. The quarter-boat, too, was gone, and the fall-tackles swung idly at the davit-heads.
They descended to the cabin: it was empty; but a fixed lamp was burning on the table, and a clock ticked at the bulkhead; some books, wine-glasses, and a couple of decanters had evidently slipped off the table, and lay in a heap to leeward. A paroquet, in a gilt cage, hung in the skylight. Save this bird, there was no living thing on board.
The cabin berths had not been slept in, and they, as well as the forecastle bunks, were empty. There was no appearance of corpses, no blood, no weapons, or sign of outrage anywhere. No ship's papers could be found, but her name was the Bonnie Jean of ... and the rest was painted out!
After making certain that there was no one on board the derelict, as the weather was becoming squally, and Captain Talbot had a signal flying "to return," Mr. Bitts quitted the brig, and shoved off. Boy-like, Derval had possessed himself of the paroquet—a beautiful little love-bird, half green and scarlet—in its pretty cage, thinking of it as a gift for his little brother at home; but with a malediction, Paul Bitts told him to "let it alone," and as he delayed, he took it out of the cage and tossed it away to leeward, when it soon disappeared.
What could the emergency have been that caused the still flying signal, now answered too late, "Can you send a boat?" to be hoisted, and to what ship had it been exhibited? It could have been to no town or fort in that latitude and longitude. Moreover, the burning lamp showed that the desertion had been most recent. Where, then, were her crew?
Conjectures were endless; a sharp look-out was kept from aloft, but no boats were seen, and as the Amethyst hauled her wind and pursued her course, every eye was turned ever and anon to the floating derelict till she was hull down, and even till her topsails sank beneath the dim and blue horizon astern.
Derval recalled to memory the old and sea-worn wreck he had seen floating in Barnstaple Bay, and the mysterious interest it had excited in his childish mind, when he never thought that a day would come and find him a sailor and far away on tropical waters.
The episode was duly recorded in the ship's log, and it formed the staple object for comment in the forecastle for the next twenty-four hours, eliciting the narration of many a quaint personal adventure from the seamen, and one of these, a somewhat ghastly one, was told by Joe Grummet.