went up to the skipper, who
still maintained his position on his favourite seat, and said--

"Come, skipper, we're only waitin' for you, and by all appearances we
mustn't wait very long neither."

Captain Turnbull raised his head like one awakened from a deep sleep,
glanced vacantly round the deserted decks, pulled strongly two or three
times at his long-extinguished pipe, and then two tears welled slowly up
into his eyes, and, overflowing the lids, rolled one down either cheek.
Then he rose quietly to his feet and, with possibly the only approach to
dignity which his actions had ever assumed, pointed to the boat and
said--

"_I'm_ cap'n of this ship. You go fust." The mate needed no second
bidding. He sprang to the ship's side and stepped thence into the boat,
taking his place at the tiller. Captain Turnbull, with his usual
deliberation, followed.

He was no sooner in the boat than the anxious crew shoved off, and,
bending to their oars, rowed as rapidly as possible away from their
dangerous proximity to the sinking brig.

The short summer night was past, day had long since broken; and though
the gale still blew strongly, the clouds had dispersed, and away to the
eastward the sky was ablaze with the opal and delicate rose tints which
immediately precede the reappearance of the sun. A few minutes later
long arrowy shafts of light shot upward into the clear blue sky, and
then a broad golden disc rose slowly above the wave-crests and tipped
them with liquid fire. The refulgent beams flashed upon the labouring
hull and grimy canvas of the brig, as she lay wallowing in the trough of
the sea a quarter of a mile away, transmuting her spars and rigging into
bars and threads of purest gleaming gold, and changing her for the
moment into an object of dream-like beauty. The men with one accord
ceased rowing to gaze upon their late home as she now glittered before
their eyes in such unfamiliar aspect; and, as they did so, her bows rose
high into the air, dripping with liquid gold, then sank down again
slowly--slowly--lower and lower still, until, with a long graceful
sliding movement, she plunged finally beneath the wave.

"There goes the old hooker to Davy Jones' locker, sparklin' like a
di'mond--God bless her! Good-bye, old lass--good-bye!" shouted the men;
and then, as she vanished from their sight, they gave three hearty
cheers to her memory.

At the same time Captain Turnbull rose in the stern-sheets of the bo