"Oh! Signor Phips. Oh, Signor Capitan Commandante. The shippy all down there. Fust ting the chest knock on cannon sticking up in water, then against her sidy, then I bery much frighted, for I see dead man's head looking at me out of hole. Oh! Capitan Commandante, the shippy there, and she full of dead men. Oh! capitan, send Massa Woods down to see if I speak truf."
So you see we had found the ship
"And," says Phips, that night, as we drank together, "it is my thirty-seventh year!"
CHAPTER XV.
WHAT THE FIRST SEARCH REVEALED.
Now, therefore, have I to write down of all that, having found the ship, we found in her. Yet how shall I begin?
Firstly, let me describe how it was with the carrack herself.
She lay canted right over on to her larboard side, the whole of her larboard forepart broke away and stove in, and crushed as would be an egg beaten in with a hammer. And in the fifty years--if it were so long--in which she had been there she seemed to have grown so much to the reef, or the reef to her, that they seemed part and parcel of one another. She must, we could see at once, have struck full head on, and the wicked teeth of the rock had torn her forepart to pieces. Whether at once she heeled over and sank was never to be known now, or whether she filled and sank after a while. Perhaps 'twas the latter, since, otherwise, it was not to be understood how those sailors whom Geronimo had known and danced with, and sang with, could, had she turned over in a sudden shock, have ever collected together the plate they had, and have gotten away in the open boat.
Aft, from the beginning of her waist above, she was not broken into at all, being quite sound Od her starboard side as she lay, though, as we found, her larboard side aft, which lay on the bottom, had rotted somewhat and bulged away, so that what was in her on that side was, indeed, lying on the sea's bed. Her masts and yards were all broke off short, and the broken pieces, into which the limestone had not wedged itself and so held them down, had doubtless risen and floated. And this must have been the case with the stern-rail which the old Portuguese had seen, though why that went adrift we never rightly understood, since no other part of the stern was gone. We found all this out later on, as you shall see, when we determined what we must do; but now Phips and I went apart to hold a conference, the first thing he said being,
"Nick, we have found the plate ship, therefore is one, nay, the greatest, of our difficulties over. But with this begins the necessity for great caution. For, see you, Nick, we cannot trust the overhauling of this ship to the two divers alone. We must know all that is in her, and we must see that all comes safe up and into our hands. What, therefore, shall be done?"