effectually. All we could do was just to keep her
afloat, and if the sea had not been exceptionally calm we could not have
done even that. Moreover, we had been obliged to throw overboard nearly
all our provisions and water. In short, we should not only have never
reached Ascension, but must have perished of hunger and thirst very
speedily, if on the morning of the third day, shortly after dawn, a
vessel had not appeared on our lee beam, apparently running before the
light breeze which rippled the sea.

"We tried to attract her attention, but without effect. She was so near
to us that we thought she must have seen us; but she did not alter her
course, or in any way acknowledge our signals. Finding that she took no
heed, we resolved, as a last chance, to reach her by rowing, though this
obliged us to right our boat, and the water poured in so fast that
incessant baling would not keep it down. At last, when we had got quite
close to the ship, the boat was so water-logged that she could not have
been kept afloat ten minutes more. We hailed again and again, but there
was no answer, nor was any one to be seen on deck. We came to the
conclusion that she had been deserted by her crew for some reason, or
that they had all died on board, and that she was drifting aimlessly
over the deep. Fortunately there was a rope hanging over her bows, up
which one of the sailors climbed, and was followed by the others in
succession. The last of us was hardly out of the cutter when she went
down."

"Had she been deserted?" inquired Ernest. "Well, yes, by the survivors
of her crew, that is. She was evidently a Portuguese trader running, I
apprehend, between the West India Islands and Lisbon, and had probably
twenty or twenty-five men on board. She must have been attacked by one
of the terrible fevers prevalent in the hot climates, the action of
which is sometimes so rapid that all attempts to stay it are useless.
Several, I suppose, must have died, and the rest were so terrified by
the fear of infection, that they had left her. Any way, there were no
human remains on board, and all the ship's boats were gone."

"I should think the danger into which you ran was worse than the one
from which you had escaped," observed Queen Laura.

"We were of the same opinion, madam," observed Captain Wilmore. "If we
could have repaired our own boat, or if a single one of the ship's boats
had been left, we should have preferred continuing our