the same pitch of voice, which might have been heard a mile
away at the least; for, although there was a strong breeze the wind did
not make much noise, and the Atlantic waves were only frisking about in
play without any great commotion. "Mind you pilot us right: it would
spoil the _Susan Jane's_ figure-head, I reckon, to run aboard a
water-logged hull!"

"Ay, ay," responded the seaman from aloft, "I'll steer you safe enough,
sir. Keep her steady as she is, full and bye!"

"Steady!" repeated the skipper to the helmsman; whose "Steady it is!"
showed his prompt attention to the command.

"Luff a bit!" said Tom after a few minutes, when the _Susan Jane_ had
almost traversed the distance which he had previously said lay between
her and the submerged vessel, and was close on to her--at least, must
have been so.

"Luff!" repeated the skipper; and--"Luff it is!" echoed the man at the
wheel mechanically as he put the helm up; and a moment afterwards the
ship glided by the derelict hull, her speed lessening as she came up to
the wind and her canvas quivering, like a bird suspending its flight in
the air with wings outstretched!

There is no more melancholy sight to be met with on the ocean than a
deserted ship. Everybody knows how dismal an empty house with closed-up
shutters looks on land, especially when the shutters are inside ones, as
is usually the case with town dwellings, and the panes have been riddled
with stones, while the walls are bedaubed with mud from the missiles of
mischievous persons, mostly, it is to be feared, of the class juvenis,
and the garden in front overgrown with grass and weeds, luxuriating in
the rankest of vegetation, and completing the picture of desolation and
decay.

Well, a derelict vessel, such as is to be frequently met with at sea,
presents a ten times more miserable appearance, if that be possible,
than an empty and deserted house. Instead of being a picture of
desolation, it is desolation itself!

The battered hull, scarred with the wounds caused by the pitiless waves,
its timbers gaping open here and there, and the rent copper-sheathing
showing, as it rolls sluggishly on the waste of waters--where it has
been left to linger out the last days of a decrepit existence, with
masts and sails and bulwarks and everything washed away, presenting such
a contrast to what it was in its pride, when it swam the waters "like a
thing of life"--is painful in the extreme to contemplate.

This