dered, it was high-water, that is
to say, there was enough water to carry the vessel clear over any rocks
which would not be uncovered at low tide. Therefore, there could not
have been a collision. Therefore, the vessel had not struck.
Therefore, she had blown up.

And it must be confessed that the sailor's arguments were not without
reason.

Towards half-past one, the colonists embarked in the boat to visit the
wreck. It was to be regretted that the brig's two boats had not been
saved; but one, as has been said, had gone to pieces at the mouth of the
Mercy, and was absolutely useless; the other had disappeared when the
brig went down, and had not again been seen, having doubtless been
crushed.

The hull of the _Speedy_ was just beginning to issue from the water.
The brig was lying right over on her side, for her masts being broken,
pressed down by the weight of the ballast displaced by the shock, the
keel was visible along her whole length. She had been regularly turned
over by the inexplicable but frightful submarine action, which had been
at the same time manifested by an enormous water-spout.

The settlers rowed round the hull, and, in proportion as the tide went
down, they could ascertain, if not the cause which had occasioned the
catastrophe, at least the effect produced.

Towards the bows, on both sides of the keel, seven or eight feet from
the beginning of the stem, the sides of the brig were frightfully torn.
Over a length of at least twenty feet there opened two large leaks,
which it would be impossible to stop up. Not only had the copper
sheathing and the planks disappeared, reduced, no doubt, to powder, but
also the ribs, the iron bolts, and tree-nails which united them. From
the entire length of the hull to the stern the false keel had been
separated with unaccountable violence, and the keel itself, torn from
the carline in several places, was split in all its length.

"I've a notion!" exclaimed Pencroft, "that this vessel will be difficult
to get afloat again."

"It will be impossible," said Ayrton.

"At any rate," observed Gideon Spilett to the sailor, "the explosion, if
there has been one, has produced singular effects! It has split the
lower part of the hull, instead of blowing up the deck and topsides!
These great rents appear rather to have been made by a rock than by the
explosion of a powder-magazine."

"There is not a rock in the channel!" answered the sailor. "I will
admit anyt