' mound in among the thickest of
the weed, with somethin' like a ship's mast standin' up from it. The
'old man' came out to look at it, and then gave orders to lower the
boat, and we pulled for the wreck with a will. But as we neared her, the
very look of her seemed to strike cold upon us all. Her hull had such an
old-fashioned build that it might ha' been afloat for a hundred years
and more; and all up the sides and over the deck great slimy coils of
weed had trailed, like them eight-armed squids that clutch men and drag
'em down. As we came nigher, the very sun clouded over, and all was
chill, and gray, and dismal, and the wreck itself looked so unearthly,
with no sign or sound of life about it, that I guess I wasn't the only
one who felt queer when we ran alongside at last.

"Up we scrambled, our very tread soundin' hollow and uncanny in that
awful silence. Not a livin' thing was there aboard, not even a mouse.
The mainmast was gone, all but a stump, and the moulderin' tackle lay on
the deck all of a heap. The plankin' was rotten and fallin' to bits, and
the place on the starn where her name had been was clean mouldered away.
All at once our coxswain, Bill Grimes, gives a jump and a holler as if
he'd trod on a rattlesnake; and when we ran for'ard, what should we see,
half hid among the weeds, but the skeleton of a man, fastened to the
bulwarks by a rusty chain!"

The speaker ceased, and looked round the attentive circle with the air
of a man who feels that he has made a hit.

"A slaver, I reckon," said one, at length.

"Or a pirate."

"Or some craft that had got starved out."

"Ay; but how cum that skeleton there? Did _you_ never find out nothin'
'bout her, old hoss?"

"_Never_," said the old man, solemnly. "That's how many a gallant ship
has ended--just a mark of 'missing' opposite her name in the owner's
list, and a few poor souls watchin' and waitin' for them that'll never
come back. Ay, boys; for as bright and pretty as these waters look,
there's many a black story hid aneath 'em as'll never be known till the
day when the sea shall give up its dead."

* * * * *

They were now east of the Azores, and within four days' run of
Gibraltar, which was their first halting-place. So the men were set to
work to scrub the deck, polish the rails, new paint the boats, mend such
of the signal flags as were torn, and "smarten" up the vessel generally;
for a sea-captain is as proud of hi