which appearances we concluded that she had passed
through a pretty desperate experience.

But what had become of her crew? There had been no sign of them when we
closed with and hailed her, nor had any of them appeared since; yet the
wreckage of the boats hanging from her davits made it difficult for us
to believe that they had abandoned the ship. True, there was no sign of
a longboat such as is usually stowed on the main-hatch of a merchantman,
but we could hardly believe that the crew had taken to her in preference
to the two quarter boats; for after the fall of the spars it would have
been difficult to launch so heavy a boat, unless indeed they had run her
overboard, fisherman fashion, through the wide gap in her bulwarks
amidships on both sides, where not only the planking but also the
stanchions had been swept away.

Shortly after the departure of Briscoe we drifted into a position which
enabled us to get a view of the stranger's stern. This confirmed our
first surmise respecting her origin, for beneath a row of smashed cabin
windows we read the words: "Anna Waarden. Amsterdam."

Briscoe remained aboard the wreck about three-quarters of an hour; and,
upon his return, reported that the craft was derelict, and that there
was nothing to show how the crew had left her, except that it appeared
to have been with the utmost suddenness, for there was no sign of their
having taken anything with them. Even the ship's papers--which he found
in the captain's stateroom and brought away with him--had been left
behind; and that the disaster could only have occurred very recently was
proved by the logbook, which had been entered up to within a few hours
of the moment when the hurricane struck us, while Briscoe had found the
chronometer still going.

He added that he had sounded the well and found barely a foot of water
in it; and that, after careful examination, he had come to the
conclusion that the hull was sound. If Mrs Vansittart would supply him
with a crew, he believed he could fit the craft with a jury rig and take
her into port. The logbook showed that she had sailed from Batavia,
homeward bound for Amsterdam, sixteen days before the date upon which we
fell in with her; while her papers made it clear that she was laden with
a cargo quite rich enough to justify the attempt at salvage. The result
of this report was that Mrs Vansittart summoned the crew aft, explained
to them, through Kennedy, the nature of the s