He proceeded at once toward the beach, and I was hungry enough, and perhaps reckless enough now, to be glad of a truce, and to follow him, in the hope of finding something eatable on board.
CHAPTER XLI.
A WATERLOGGED VESSEL.
Descending the rocks, which were steep and rugged, we reached their base, where a dangerous and treacherous beach sloped abruptly down into the deep water. It was covered with frothy sea-weed, bright-colored shells, strange-looking pieces of blubber, and decayed fish of many kinds.
Over some large misshapen rocks, which were covered by masses of barnacles and long tangles of sea-weed that waved in the water, but which adhered to the stone with the tenacity of steel bands, we reached—but not without considerable difficulty, and being partly immersed in the foam that boiled over the reef connecting the islands—the wreck that lay hard and fast upon it.
By her build she was evidently a new Spanish brig of somewhere about one hundred and fifty tons burden, and straight as an arrow in her sheer stroke, which had been painted yellow.
Her masts were gone by the board, and her bowsprit had been snapped off near the cap. Every vestige of the bulwarks had long since been torn away by the waves that had swept over her; and the skeleton row of her timber-heads, the windlass-bitts, and the booby-hatch, alone remained.
Her hull had been swept of every thing else.
She had evidently been long tossing to and fro, perhaps for six months, exposed to wind and weather. Nearly every vestige of paint had long since been washed from her hull by the waves, or scorched from it by the sun.
Her copper was thickly encrusted with barnacles, and coated with long trailers of sea-weed.