They were all too weak to attempt to swim for it; so, wolfishly, with haggard eyes and longing appetites they watched the wretched carrion for hours, until it floated out of sight.
Then three nautilus shells, with purple sails outspread, passed near them, and, to Morley's excited vision, they seemed like large Roman galleys, or fairy barges; at a vast distance—such craft as he had read of in legends of the Rhine, in fairy tales, and knightly ballads.
And now came Mother Carey's chickens, hopping and tripping about the wreck, and on the ripples round it—merrily and happily, like brown sparrows in a farmyard at home.
About the setting of the sun, they were roused from their listlessness by the sudden apparition of a large vessel, barque-rigged—that is, with the fore and mainmasts of a ship and a mizzen like a schooner's mainmast, with a long spanker-boom—bearing down towards them.
There was a fine breeze blowing; she had all her canvas set, and ran on a taut bowline.
"A ship! a sail! a sail!" they exclaimed together.
"Now, blessed be Heaven!" said Tom, "we are saved at last! Hurrah—hurrah!"
She was painted a kind of yellowish white; her side chains and hawse-holes, and all her iron work, looked red and rusty, as if she had been long in tropical waters.
With almost inarticulate lips they sought to hail her, and waved their hands in frantic glee as she came on, with the white foam curling under her bluff bows, where the old copper was green, and covered with barnacles. Her side was lined with the faces of her crew, who seemed to be in earnest conference, and some of whom gesticulated violently.
She seemed to be foreign by her build and rig, as well as by the scarlet and blue shirts and fur caps of her men.