After going a little way, during which I thought I should be unable to command my tongue or collect my wits, so heart-staggering had been that leap of fancy in me, I said:
'You have given me an extraordinary piece of news. I am deeply interested in a ship that was abandoned in a dismasted state in the neighbourhood of the Horn.'
'By gad! then,' said he, halting me with a violent, nervous pull at my arm, 'you had better go aboard and get a description at first hand, for the whaler's here to refresh only; she's been in the bay a fortnight and sails to-morrow.'
Without exchanging a word I walked, almost ran, to the waterside.
A number of boats lay rippling close in to the beach. A couple of Malay or Africander boatmen seeing me coming jumped into one of the little craft, and in a few minutes I was being rowed in the direction of the whaler.
It was about half-past four o'clock in the afternoon; the light of the high South African midsummer sun fell on the water in a blaze that made one think of a sky-wide bolt of flame; the scorching heat steamed to the face off the surface in tingling red-hot needles; there was not a breath of air; along the polished surface, breathing with the swell of the sea, slipped the small thunder of the distant surf. We drew close to the whaler and I read her name upon her counter 'Sea Queen, Nantucket.' Her sides were blistered and honeycombed with heat and conflict; her cabin scuttles or windows, in a row of three above her green sheathing, stared in their dirt blearedly across the water, like the eyes of a blind man; a number of seamen of several dyes of complexion and queerly attired overhung the bulwark rails.
She was a little ship of about four hundred tons and looked to be dropping to pieces with use, so deeply was she seamed, so ill were her masts stayed, so rusty and pale was her rigging, so worn and ragged the complexion and suggestion of the canvas heaped clumsily and negligently bound. When the boat was alongside I looked up at a copper-coloured face covered with black prickles of hair, and asked if the captain was aboard.
'Ay,' was the answer.
'I wish to see him on very particular business,' said I.