e of descrying a sail,
but the horizon was bare. Then, as the light grew stronger, I proceeded
to minutely inspect the mass of wreckage that had afforded us shelter
throughout the night, with the view of ascertaining its capabilities as
a refuge for a more or less lengthy period--until, in fact, we were
either taken off by a passing ship, or perished of starvation. There
seemed to be a great deal of it--much more than I could satisfactorily
account for--but as the dawn spread and brightened, and objects grew
increasingly distinct, everything became intelligible, even to the cause
of the catastrophe that had so suddenly and terribly hurled us from a
situation of safety and comfort into one of the direst peril and
uncertainty. For I found that while my companion and I were clinging to
the wreckage of the ill-fated _City of Cawnpore's_ mainmast--the whole
of which had somehow come adrift from the hull--we were surrounded by
and tangled up with a large quantity of planking and woodwork, some of
which we recognised as having belonged to our own ship, while the
remainder resolved itself into the shattered hull of a large,
timber-laden, wooden ship which had been cut nearly half through by the
tremendous impact of our own vessel upon it when she struck it and so
destroyed herself in the darkness of the preceding night. A minute
inspection of this wreck enabled me to clearly understand exactly what
had happened: the stranger had been dismasted--for her spars were still
attached to her hull--and had, at the same time, or subsequently, become
water-logged to such an extent as to submerge her hull nearly to the
level of the deck; her crew had abandoned her; and she had been left
washing about, a scarcely visible yet truly formidable death-trap, for
our own good ship to blunder upon to her destruction. The force of the
blow had turned the stranger nearly bottom up, so I could not even make
a guess at her nationality, and, worse still, it had robbed us of a
possible chance of slightly bettering our condition by taking up our
quarters aboard her.

In addition to the mass that my hapless companion and I had taken refuge
upon there were a few small quantities of detached wreckage floating
here and there within a radius of about a quarter of a mile, and among
these I by and by noticed something that looked so much like a capsized
boat that--as there seemed to be no sharks about--I determined to swim
out and examine it. I mentioned