at had placed them upon that raft,--to have been certain
that they were human beings. A stranger to them, looking upon them in
reality,--or upon a picture, giving a faithful representation of them,--
might have doubted their humanity, and mistaken them for _fiends_. No
one could have been blamed for such a misconception.

If human beings in shape, and so in reality, they were fiends in aspect,
and not far from it in mental conformation. Even in appearance they
were more like skeletons than men. One actually was a skeleton,--not a
living skeleton, but a corpse, clean-stripped of its flesh. The
ensanguined bones, with some fragments of the cartilage still adhering
to them, showed that the despoliation had been recent. The skeleton was
not perfect. Some of the bones were absent. A few were lying near on
the timbers of the raft, and a few others might have been seen in places
where it was horrible to behold them!

The raft was an oblong platform of some twenty feet in length by about
fifteen in width. It was constructed out of pieces of broken masts and
spars of a ship, upon which was supported an irregular sheeting of
planks, the fragments of bulwarks, hatches, cabin-doors that had been
wrested from their hinges, lids of tea-chests, coops, and a few other
articles,--such as form the paraphernalia of movables on board a ship.
There was a large hogshead with two or three small barrels upon the
raft; and around its edge were lashed several empty casks, serving as
buoys to keep it above water. A single spar stood up out of its centre,
or "midships," to which was rigged--in a very slovenly manner--a large
lateen sail,--either the spanker or spritsail of a ship, or the mizzen
topsail of a bark.

Around the "step" of the mast a variety of other objects might have been
seen: such as oars, handspikes, pieces of loose boards, some tangled
coils of rope, an axe or two, half a dozen tin pots and "tots,"--such as
are used by sailors,--a quantity of shark-bones clean picked, with two
or three other bones, like those already alluded to, and whose size and
form told them to be the _tibia_ of a human skeleton.

Between twenty and thirty men were moving amid this miscellaneous
collection,--not all moving: for they were in every conceivable
attitude, of repose as of action. Some were seated, some lying
stretched, some standing, some staggering,--as if reeling under the
influence of intoxication, or too feeble to support their b