, her sides
were coated with green weed; her rudder, wrenched from its pintle,
lay hopelessly askew. On her stern could still be read, in blistered
paint, her name, "_The Seven Sisters_ of Troy." There she lay
dismantled, with a tangle of useless rigging, not fit for saving,
left to dangle from her bulwarks; and a quick fancy might liken her,
as the tide left her, and the water in her hold gushed out through a
dozen gaping seams, to some noble animal that had crept to this
corner to bleed to death.

Mrs. Goodwyn-Sandys looked towards the wreck with curious interest.

"I should like to examine it more closely," she said.

For answer Sam pulled round the schooner, and let the boat drift
under her overhanging side.

"You can climb aboard if you like," he said, as he shipped the sculls
and, standing up, grasped the schooner's bulwarks. "Stop, let me
make the painter fast."

He took up the rope, swung himself aboard, and looped it round the
stump of a broken davit; then bent down and gave a hand to his
companion. She was agile, and the step was of no great height; but
Sam had to take both her hands before she stood beside him, and ah!
but his heart beat cruelly quick.

Once on board Mrs. Goodwyn-Sandys displayed the most eager
inquisitiveness, almost endangering her beautiful neck as she peered
down into the hole where the water lay, black and gloomy. She turned
and walked aft with her feet in the scuppers, and her right hand
pressed against the deck, so great was the cant on the vessel.
It was uphill walking too, for the schooner was sagged in the waist,
and the stern tilted up to a considerable height. Nevertheless she
reached the poop at last. Sam followed.

"I want to see the captain's cabin," she explained.

Sam wondered, but led the way. It was no easy matter to descend the
crazy ladder, and in the cabin itself the light was so dim that he
struck a match. Its flare revealed a broken table, a horsehair
couch, and a row of cupboards along the walls. On the port side
these had mostly fallen open, and the doors in some cases hung
by a single hinge. There was a terrible smell in the place.
Mrs. Goodwyn-Sandys looked around.

"Does the water ever come up here?" she asked.

Sam lit another match.

"No," he said, stooping and examining the floor.

"You are quite sure?"

Her tone was so eager that he looked up.

"Yes, I am quite sure; but why do you ask?"

She did not answer: nor, in the faint lig