The men nudged each other, and there was a general silence; for it was but seldom that Herrick could be got to spin a yarn, and he was now evidently about to "get off" one of his best.
"I was cruising in these waters," he went on, "'bout twenty years ago, when one afternoon we sighted a sort o' mound in among the thickest of the weed, with somethin' like a ship's mast standin' up from it. The 'old man' came out to look at it, and then gave orders to lower the boat, and we pulled for the wreck with a will. But as we neared her, the very look of her seemed to strike cold upon us all. Her hull had such an old-fashioned build that it might ha' been afloat for a hundred years and more; and all up the sides and over the deck great slimy coils of weed had trailed, like them eight-armed squids that clutch men and drag 'em down. As we came nigher, the very sun clouded over, and all was chill, and gray, and dismal, and the wreck itself looked so unearthly, with no sign or sound of life about it, that I guess I wasn't the only one who felt queer when we ran alongside at last.
"Up we scrambled, our very tread soundin' hollow and uncanny in that awful silence. Not a livin' thing was there aboard, not even a mouse. The mainmast was gone, all but a stump, and the moulderin' tackle lay on the deck all of a heap. The plankin' was rotten and fallin' to bits, and the place on the starn where her name had been was clean mouldered away. All at once our coxswain, Bill Grimes, gives a jump and a holler as if he'd trod on a rattlesnake; and when we ran for'ard, what should we see, half hid among the weeds, but the skeleton of a man, fastened to the bulwarks by a rusty chain!"
The speaker ceased, and looked round the attentive circle with the air of a man who feels that he has made a hit.
"A slaver, I reckon," said one, at length.
"Or a pirate."
"Or some craft that had got starved out."
"Ay; but how cum that skeleton there? Did you never find out nothin' 'bout her, old hoss?"
"Never," said the old man, solemnly. "That's how many a gallant ship has ended—just a mark of 'missing' opposite her name in the owner's list, and a few poor souls watchin' and waitin' for them that'll never come back. Ay, boys; for as bright and pretty as these waters look, there's many a black story hid aneath 'em as'll never be known till the day when the sea shall give up its dead."