was red and rough with rust; at several points the rigging was in
considerable tangle; occasionally the boom moved a little with a
tortured skirling cadence; and the sail, rotten, I presume, from
exposure--for she had certainly encountered no bad weather--gave out
anon a heavy languid flap at a rent down the middle. Besides Sallitt,
looking out there where he had jammed himself, I saw no one.

By a paddle-stroke now, and another presently, I had closely approached
her about four in the afternoon, though my awe of the ship was
complicated by that perfume of hers, whose fearful effects I knew. My
tentative approach, however, proved to me, when I remained unaffected,
that, here and now, whatever danger there had been was past; and
finally, by a hanging rope, with a thumping desperation of heart, I
clambered up her beam.

* * * * *

They had died, it seemed, very suddenly, for nearly all the twelve were
in poses of activity. Egan was in the very act of ascending the
companion-way; Lamburn was sitting against the chart-room door,
apparently cleaning two carbines; Odling at the bottom of the
engine-room stair seemed to be drawing on a pair of reindeer komagar;
and Cartwright, who was often in liquor, had his arms frozen tight round
the neck of Martin, whom he seemed to be kissing, they two lying stark
at the foot of the mizzen-mast.

Over all--over men, decks, rope-coils--in the cabin, in the
engine-room--between skylight leaves--on every shelf, in every
cranny--lay a purplish ash or dust, very impalpably fine. And steadily
reigning throughout the ship, like the very spirit of death, was that
aroma of peach-blossom.

* * * * *

Here it had reigned, as I could see from the log-dates, from the rust on
the machinery, from the look of the bodies, from a hundred indications,
during something over a year. It was, therefore, mainly by the random
workings of winds and currents that this fragrant ship of death had been
brought hither to me.

And this was the first direct intimation which I had that the Unseen
Powers (whoever and whatever they may be), who through the history of
the world had been so very, very careful to conceal their Hand from the
eyes of men, hardly any longer intended to be at the pains to conceal
their Hand from me. It was just as though the Boreal had been openly
presented to me by a spiritual agency, which, though I could not see it,
I could