the
west. Jim slid down the ratlines, bubbling over with suppressed news.
Before his feet had touched the deck Kitchell had kicked him into the
stays again, fulminating blasphemies.

"Sing!" he shouted, as the Chinaman clambered away like a bewildered
ape; "sing a little more. I would if I were you. Why don't you sing and
wave, you dam' fool philly-loo bird?"

"Yas, sah," answered the coolie.

"What you yell for? Charlie, ask him whaffo him sing."

"I tink-um ship," answered Charlie calmly, looking out over the
starboard quarter.

"Ship!"

"Him velly sick," hazarded the Chinaman from the ratlines, adding a
sentence in Chinese to Charlie.

"He says he tink-um ship sick, all same; ask um something--ship velly
sick."

By this time the Captain, Wilbur, and all on board could plainly
make out a sail some eight miles off the starboard bow. Even at that
distance, and to eyes so inexperienced as those of Wilbur, it needed but
a glance to know that something was wrong with her. It was not that she
failed to ride the waves with even keel, it was not that her rigging was
in disarray, nor that her sails were disordered. Her distance was too
great to make out such details. But in precisely the same manner as a
trained physician glances at a doomed patient, and from that indefinable
look in the face of him and the eyes of him pronounces the verdict
"death," so Kitchell took in the stranger with a single comprehensive
glance, and exclaimed:

"Wreck!"

"Yas, sah. I tink-um velly sick."

"Oh, go to 'll, or go below and fetch up my glass--hustle!"

The glass was brought. "Son," exclaimed Kitchell--"where is that man
with the brains? Son, come aloft here with me." The two clambered up the
ratlines to the crow's nest. Kitchell adjusted the glass.

"She's a bark," he muttered, "iron built--about seven hundred tons,
I guess--in distress. There's her ensign upside down at the
mizz'nhead--looks like Norway--an' her distress signals on the spanker
gaff. Take a blink at her, son--what do you make her out? Lord, she's
ridin' high."

Wilbur took the glass, catching the stranger after several clumsy
attempts. She was, as Captain Kitchell had announced, a bark, and, to
judge by her flag, evidently Norwegian.

"How she rolls!" muttered Wilbur.

"That's what I can't make out," answered Kitchell. "A bark such as she
ain't ought to roll thata way; her ballast'd steady her."

"What's the flags on that boom aft--one's red and white