XVI
All that night they swung and bumped inside their cage, with somewhat less of bodily discomfort as the wind fell and the sea went down, but with only such small relief to their minds as postponement of immediate death might offer.
Wulfrey lay prone on the raft, grimping to it mechanically, utterly worn out with all he had gone through these last four days. He sank into a stupor again and lay heedless of everything.
The tide fell to its lowest and was rising again when dawn came, and though the huge green waves still rolled through their cage, and swung them to and fro, and sent them rasping against its massive bars, they were as nothing compared with the waves of yesterday.
It was the sound of Macro cracking shell-fish and eating them that roused Wulfrey. He raised his heavy head and looked round. The mate hacked off a bunch of huge blue-black mussels from the post they were grinding against at the moment, opened several of them and put them under his nose. Without a word he began eating and felt the better for them.
Presently he sat up and looked about him in amazement, and rubbed the salt out of his smarting eyes and looked again.
"Where in heaven's name are we?" he gasped.
And well he might, for stranger sight no man ever set eyes on.
"Last night I thocht we were in hell," said Macro grimly. "An' seems to me we're not far from it. We're in the belly of a dead ship an' there's nought but dead ships round us."
Their immediate harbourage, into which the friendly wave had dropped them, was composed of huge baulks of timber like those that had tried to end them the night before, sea-sodden and crusted thick with shell-fish, and as Wulfrey's eyes wandered along them he saw that the mate was right. They were undoubtedly the mighty weather-worn ribs of some great ship, canting up naked and forlorn out of the depths and reaching far above their heads. There in front was the great curving stem-piece, and yon stiff straight piece behind was the stern-post.