ter; some of the timbers, too, of the hull were jammed in the black
gums of the ledge, shrouded in sea-weed and kelp, as if all had
grown there together. Farther on was part of the fore-mast and top-mast,
swimming nearly in mid-channel, anchored as it were by one of the
shrouds--twisted, perhaps, around a sharp rock below. The top-sail
was still fast to the yards, hoisted and sheeted home, and laid in
the water transversely to the masts, just as it fell under the raking
fire of our first broadside, jerking over the main-top-mast with it.

"A myriad of sea-birds, from Mother Carey's chickens to gulls and
cormorants, and even vultures and eagles from the shore, were clustered
on the wreck as thick as bees--screaming, croaking, and snapping at each
other with their hard beaks and bills, while thousands more were
hurrying in from seaward, and either swooped down over the ledge, or
tried to find a place on the floating spars.

"The gorge, too, was alive with barracoutas and sharks, leaping out of
water, or with their stiff triangular fins cutting just above the
surface, and sometimes even grazing the blades of the cutter's oars. I
pulled slowly toward the wreck of the fore-mast, and hooked on to the
reef-cringle of the fore-top-sail. The birds did not move at our
approach, and one old red-eyed vulture snapped on the polished bill of
the boat-hook, leaving the marks of his beak in the smooth iron. Down in
the clear green depths, too, the water was alive with ravenous fish, and
we could see at times hundreds of them with their heads fastened on to
some dark object, rolling it, and biting it, and pulling every way, with
now and then the glance of a clean-picked bone shining white in the
limpid water as the mass was jerked out of our sight.

"The bowmen, however, attracted my attention, and one of them sang out,
as he pointed with his finger, 'I say, Mr. Cleveland, here's the captain
and his priest lying in the belly of the top-sail!'

"I walked forward, while the men fired a few pistols to scare away the
birds, and looked in. There, about a foot below the water, lay one
drowned man and half the body of another, who had evidently been cut in
twain by a twenty-four pound shot at the stomach, leaving only a few
revolting shreds of entrails dangling beneath the carcass. The other
corpse was a large, burly, fat man, wrapped in a black cassock, with a
knotted rope to confine it at the midriff, and around his thick bare
neck was a