the
oil and light stuff on top, so she won't be apt to turn turtle."

It was as he said. We were all in the same ship, so as to speak, wrecked
and water-logged to the southward of the Cape. The best thing to do was
to take it in the right spirit and fall to work without delay, getting
her in as shipshape condition as possible. The fog might last a week, and
the _Pirate_ might get clear across the equator before stopping a second
time in her course. I knew that even Trunnell would not wait more than a
few hours; for if we did not turn up then, it was duff to dog's-belly, as
the saying went, that we wouldn't heave in sight at all. The ocean is a
large place for a small boat to get lost in, and without compass or
sextant there would be little chance for her to overhaul a ship standing
along a certain course.

The dense vapor rolled in cool masses over the wreck, and the gentle
breeze freshened so that the topsail, which still drew fair from the
yard, bellied out and strained away taut on a bowline, taking the wind
from almost due north, or dead away from the Cape. The _Sovereign_ shoved
through it log-wise under the pull, the swell roaring and gurgling along
her sunken channels and through her water ports. She was making not more
than a mile an hour, or hardly as fast as a man could swim, yet on she
went, and as she did so, she was leaving behind our last hope of being
picked up.

XII

The first night we spent aboard the hulk was far from convincing us of
her seaworthiness. I had been in--a sailor is never "on board"--two ships
that had seen fit to leave me above them, but their last throes were no
more trying to the nerves than the ugly rooting of the _Sovereign_ into
the swell during that night. At each roll she appeared to be on the way
to turn her keel toward the sky, and, at a plunge slowly down a
sea-slope, she made us hold our breaths. Down, down, and under she would
gouge, the water roaring and seething over sunken decks amidships, and
even pouring over the topgallant rail until it would seem certain she was
making her way to the bottom, and I would instinctively start to rise
from the cabin transom to make a break for the deck. Then she would
finally stop and take a slow heave to windward, which started a Niagara
thundering below the deck, where the cargo was torn loose and sent
crashing about in a whirlpool.

I once read a description by an English landsman of a shipwreck, and he
told how the water