except at the end of a spar?" queried
Bob.

"I believe not," I replied; "but--"

"Then sail ho!" exclaimed Bob excitedly, pointing in the direction of
our starboard-bow.

I looked in the direction he indicated, but was too late: we were on the
very summit of a wave at the moment that Bob spoke, but were now
settling into the trough. As we rose to the next sea, however, I not
only saw the ghostly light, but also got an indistinct view of the ship
herself.

She was fearfully close, but appeared to be at the moment sheering away
from us. She looked long enough for a three-masted vessel, but one mast
only was standing, evidently the mainmast. The corposant appeared to
have attached itself to the stump of her foremast, which had been
carried away about fifteen or twenty feet from the deck, and I thought
her bowsprit seemed also to be missing.

She was scudding under close-reefed maintopsail, and, from her sluggish
movements, was evidently very much overloaded, or, what I thought more
probable, had a great deal of water in her. I was the more inclined to
this opinion from the peculiar character of her motions.

As she rose on the back of a sea, her stern seemed at first to be
_pinned down_, as it were, until it appeared as though the following
wave would run clean over her; but gradually her stern rose until it was
a considerable height above the water, whilst her bow in its turn seemed
weighed down, as would be the case with a large body of water rushing
from aft forward.

They evidently saw our light, for a faint hail of "-- ahoy!" came down
the wind to us from her.

"In distress and wants assistance, by the look of it," remarked Bob.
"But, poor chaps, it's little of that we can give 'em. Heaven and
'arth! look at that, Harry."

As he spoke, the ship, which was rushing forward furiously on the back
of a sea, suddenly sheered wildly to port, until she lay broadside-to;
the crest of the sea overtook her, and, breaking on board her in one
vast volume of wildly flashing foam, threw her down upon her beam-ends,
and, as it swept over her, her mast declined more and more towards the
water, until it lay submerged.

Then, as we gazed in speechless horror at the dreadful catastrophe, a
loud, piercing shriek rang out clear and shrill above the hoarse
diapason of the howling tempest. She rolled completely bottom upwards,
and then disappeared.

"Broached to, and capsized!" ejaculated we both in the same breath.