ffer much
from fatigue, so we agreed that two should row while the other two
stretched themselves at the bottom of the canoe to rest. Kalong and I
took one watch, while Hassan and Blount took the other, Eva and Nutmeg
acting as look-outs. Eva was very anxious to take a paddle to assist;
but her strength was not great, and I feared it would only uselessly
exhaust her; but Little Nutmeg did not wait for permission, and as soon
as Blount laid down his paddle she seized it, and showed that she could
make use of it to very good effect. Kalong and I were paddling, and Eva
was scanning the horizon in every direction, in the hopes of seeing the
_Fraulein_, when she cried out:--

"Look there--look there, brother Mark! I see either an island or a huge
whale, or the hull of a ship; but I cannot make out exactly what it is."

I looked in the direction, she pointed at to leeward, and a little on
our larboard bow, and though I kept my eyes fixed on the spot
attentively, I was unable to determine what the object was. We could
not tell why we had not before seen it; but we supposed this was owing
to the different direction, in which the rays of the sun struck it. It
was stationary, for as we paddled on we neared it.

"Me know what it is," said Kalong. "Chinese junk without masts."

We found he was right; and as we drew near, a very curious appearance
she presented. Her masts were gone, though she seemed in every other
respect to be uninjured; but not a living person could we discover on
board. She was a merchant vessel, and might have measured some two
hundred tons. Her head and stern rose considerably above the waist. At
the after part were a succession of poop decks, one above another,
narrowing towards the top, so that the highest was very small. It
sloped very much from the stern, and on it was a windlass used to lift
the huge rudder. On either side of the next deck were two cabins, with
a roof in front of them made of bits of mother-of-pearl instead of
glass. What is called the nettings ran from aft round the greater part
of the vessel. The beams of the deck projected beyond the sides, and
each butt-end was ornamented with an ugly face carved and painted.
Every face was different, and ugly as the others. Some were of beasts,
and some like human beings, and others of monsters which have no
existence. The bow was perfectly flat, the stem scarcely coming out of
the water. There was a topgallant forecastle, and on