our draught, but _Titan_, drawing less, is berthed at her
stern and their men are taking advantage of low water to pin and tomp
and strengthen the rearmost bulkhead that must now do duty for the
demolished stern section. A boat from _Titan_ brings the officer
in charge, and he greets his senior with no disguised relief. A serious
leak has developed in one of the compartments that they had counted on
for buoyancy. . . . "Right under the bilge, and ungetatable, with all
that rubble in th' holds. A good job you brought out these extra pumps.
We should manage now, all right!"

Technical measures are discussed and a plan of operations agreed. At
half-flood there will be water for us alongside, and a 'lift' can be
tried. Number one hold is good and tight, but still has a bulk of water
to steady her on the ledge; number two is clear and buoyant; three has
the obstinate leak; the engine-room is undamaged, but water makes
through in moderate quantity. Number four--"the bulkhead is bulged in
like the bilge of a cask, but that cement we put down last week has set
pretty well, and the struts and braces should hold." Number five? There
is no number five, most of it lies on deep bottom off the Heads, some
miles away!

With his colleague, the commander puts off to the wreck, to assess the
prospects, and we have opportunity to note the inboard trim of her
derelict posts and quarters. Davits, swung outboard as when the last of
her crew left her, stand up in unfamiliar dejection, the frayed ends and
bights of the boat-falls dangling overside and thrumming on the rusty
hull. The boat-deck shows haste and urgency in the litter of spars and
tackle thrown violently aside: a seaman's bag with sodden pitiful rags
of apparel lies awry on the skids, marking some cool and forethinking
mariner denied a passage for his goods. Living-rooms and crew quarters
show the indications of sudden call, in open desks--a book or two cast
side, quick-thrown bedspreads, an array of clothing on a line; the
range-guards in the cook's galley have caught the tilt of pots and
mess-kits as they slid alee in the grounding. The bridge, with chart and
wheelhouse open to the wind and spray, and sea-gear adrift and
disordered, strikes the most desolating note in the abandon of it all.
Tenantless and quiet, the same scene would be commonplace and understood
in dock or harbour, with neighbourly shore structures to point a reason
for absence of ship-life, but out here--the c