When the small boat was out of danger the officer touched the button and an instant later the still morning air was shattered by a terrific roar.
The wreck seemed almost to rise from the sea, a great volume of fire and smoke issued from her amidships, and she broke in two, the water rushing in and filling the interior with a sound like the echo of the explosion.
Slowly the derelict settled, her stern going first, until the very tip of the tottering mast disappeared below the surface. Only a few splintered deck timbers, which would soon follow the ship to the bottom, remained to show where the hulk had disappeared.
“Good job, that,” Caleb declared, when the boat had returned to the steamer, “though it cost us three hours’ time. That hulk had been floating for nearly a year, according to the pilot charts.”
The second day after the blowing up of the derelict Porpoise, a steamship was sighted by the whaleback. It was the City of Havana, of the James E. Ward line, and, by running in close, Caleb was able to hold converse with the ship’s captain.
To the satisfaction of the captain of Number Three, the City of Havana’s commander could, and did, give him some information about the derelict brig of which they were in search.
The steamship had sighted the Silver Swan in latitude 28, longitude 69:13, and reported the vessel in a remarkable state of preservation. The spring storms had not appeared to damage her much.
This news was hailed joyfully by Caleb and Brandon, and the course of the whaleback was changed a little more to the east.
The weather, however, which had been all that they could wish thus far since leaving Savannah, began to get nasty. The sea became short and choppy, though without apparently affecting the sailing of the whaleback, and the sky looked bad.
Finally, after a day or two of this, a dead calm occurred, and Caleb shook his head sagely.