“Here’s a bad job, I lay. She’s a settling down too. She’ll be out of sight under water afore we’re abreast, or I’m a Kanaka,” by which he meant a South Sea Islander.
“HE POINTED.”
I made my way to the deck, and reported what I had seen to the chief mate. It was not twenty minutes after this when a loud cry arose from the forecastle, followed by a rush of men to the rail, to see what the fellow who had called out was pointing at. We of the poop, forgetting the ship’s discipline in the excitement raised by the shout and headlong hurry of men forward, ran to the side to look also, and we saw close against the lee-bow of the ship, fast sliding along past the side, the figure of a man in a lifebuoy. He was naked to the waist; his arms overhung the circle, but his form, leaning forward, had so tilted the buoy that his head lay under water. He rose and fell upon the seas, which sometimes threw him a little way out and then submerged him again, with his long hair streaming like grass at the bottom of a shallow running stream.
The sailors along the waist and on the forecastle were looking aft, as though they expected that the mate would back the topsail yard and send a boat; but the man that had gone past was dead as dead can be: even my young eyes could have told that, though his head had been above water all the time.
“It is a recent wreck, I expect, sir,” I heard Mr. Johnson say to the captain, who stepped on deck at that moment. “The poor fellow didn’t look to have been in the water long.”
“There was no doubt he was a corpse?” inquired the captain, to whose sight the form of the drowned man was invisible, so rapidly had it veered astern into the troubled and concealing foam of our wake.
“Oh yes, sir,” answered Mr. Johnson. “His face only lifted now and again.”
At eight bells the wreck was in sight from the poop, but at a long distance. I went below to get some breakfast, and then returned, too much interested in the object that had hove into view to stay in the cabin, though I had been on deck since four o’clock, and had scarcely slept more than two hours during the middle watch.
Our ship’s helm had been slightly shifted, so that we might pass the wreck close. As we advanced, fragments of the torn and mutilated fabric passed us; portions of yards, of broken masts with the attached gear snaking out from it, casks, hatch-covers, and so forth. It was easy to guess, by the look of these things, that they had been wrenched from the hull by a hurricane. I noticed a length of sail-cloth attached to a yard, with a knot in it so tied that I did not need to have been at sea many months to guess that nothing could have done it but some furious ocean blast.