One day a whale rose suddenly, about a quarter of a mile from the ship, and brought a shriek of dismay from old Nance Folgate, who clung to Manfredi, the Italian mate, on seeing it floating steadily, like Sindbad's island in the sea; and still greater was her terror when he spouted a cloud of water in the air, stuck up his flukes, and went surging down with a sound like a roar to the depths below.
On another day there came a shoal of porpoises from windward of the ship, rushing in madlike and headlong career.
On they come, on and on, surging, rollicking, flashing in the sunshine, as they leaped from one bank of water to the other, all keeping time in their ocean race, all going together, and all crossing the ship's bows in one frolicsome shoal. So close do they pass that their little red eyes can be seen twinkling and glancing; and away they go, surging and leaping on towards the far horizon, till they are lost or blinded amid "the grey and melancholy wastes" of ocean. It is always on a breezy day that these living shoals are seen. Rose clapped her hands, as if at a horse-race, when they passed.
"You English call them porpoises, from our Italian term, porco-pesce," said the soft voice of Manfredi; "but is it not strange, Mees Rose, that they do go so very fast with only three fins?"
"Only three, Mr. Manfredi?"
"Yes; one on the back, placed rather below the middle, and two on the breast—no more."
But greater was the excitement when a water-logged vessel, whose deck was almost flush with the sea—a brig which the waves of some mighty storm had swept of everything from stem to stern, so that the stumps of her two masts, and a few weather-worn timber-heads, alone were visible above her planks—was passed, drifting, silent and alone, about two miles to leeward.
The melancholy object excited, of course, much remark, and made Ethel and her sister weep, and speculate upon the probable fate of her crew, their story, and the story of that poor deserted ship, to the rusty chain-plates of which the barnacles and seaweed clung, as it drifted away into the wastes of sea and sky; and Ethel thought of the oft-quoted words of the Psalmist—words she had heard again and again in the old church at home:
"They who go down to the sea in ships, and do business in the great waters, these see the works of the Lord, and His wonders in the mighty deep."
Dr. Heriot, who was a very enterprising young man, Hawkshaw, and Manfredi, proposed to have a boat lowered for the purpose of visiting the wreck, and ascertaining her name; but the Hermione was running free, under a press of sail, and Captain Phillips and Mr. Quail flatly refused permission; so that the old wreck was rapidly dropped astern.