unavailing. In two or three minutes more not a human being of all the
Spaniard's crew was to be seen alive; and except a few planks and spars,
and here and there a bale or a chest, mere dots in the ocean, we might
have fancied, as we looked out on those foaming waters, that all that
had passed was some hideous dream. Often, indeed, have I since had the
same dreadful drama acted over before my eyes while I slept; so deep was
the impression made on me by the reality. Very many things which long
after that time occurred have entirely faded from my memory.

Had it been possible, (as Peter told me he thought it would have been,
had all the crew done their duty), to keep the galleon afloat a few
hours longer, in all probability we should have been the means of saving
the people. In the course of the day the wind fell, and the sea went
down sufficiently to have allowed our boats to have passed between the
two vessels without any great risk. Captain Helfrich was certainly not
a man to have deserted her while a chance remained of saving a human
being. While she floated he would have stuck to her. "Remember, Jack,"
said Peter, "the first duty of a ship's company is to stick by each
other--to keep sober, and to obey their officers. Without a head, men
can do nothing. They are like a flock of sheep running here and there,
and never getting on. What is a man's duty is best; and you see here,
for instance, that the lives of all depend on their doing their duty."

Sail was again made on the brig, and she was able to lay her course. At
night, however, it came on to blow again, and by next morning we were
once more hove-to with more sea, and the wind chopping about and making
it break in a far more dangerous way than it had done on the previous
day. I found, when I came on deck after my watch below, all hands
looking out at an object which had just been discovered a little abaft
the lee-bow. Some said it was a dead whale; one or two declared that it
was a rock; but the officers, after examining it with their glasses,
pronounced it to be a vessel bottom uppermost! The question was,
whether the wreck was deserted, or whether any people still clung to it.
Hove-to as we were, we made of course considerable lee-way; and keeping
in the direction we were then driving, we should before long get near
enough to examine her condition. Had not the brig already received some
damage, Captain Helfrich would, I believe, have run down at