was now long
past when her crew ought to have been stirring, nor was there the
faintest film of smoke issuing from her galley chimney. Yet it seemed
that she could scarcely be abandoned, for she carried two boats at her
davits, one on each quarter, while there were two more, bottom-up, on
the gallows abaft the mainmast, and, unless I was greatly mistaken, I
could make out the longboat stowed on top of the main hatch, with the
jollyboat in her. But I could not be certain of this, for the vessel's
decks seemed to be lumbered up most unaccountably just in that part of
her. As I was looking at her, she canted a bit, bringing her poop into
clearer view, and then I was able to see that, as the boatswain had
said, there appeared to be a solitary figure up there hanging over the
rail in a most extraordinary posture close alongside the ship's bell,
which still most persistently tolled a single stroke at irregular
intervals. Once, when the craft rolled toward us, I thought I caught a
glimpse of what might possibly be a hole in her poop deck, just where
the mizenmast had once been stepped. But these imperfect glimpses,
which were all that I was just then able to get, were so full of
suggestion that, as soon as the watch had finished washing the decks,
the weather still being fine, with no sign of wind, I had the smallest
of our quarter boats lowered, and, jumping into her with a couple of
hands, pushed off for the stranger, determined to pay her a visit, and
thus either confirm or banish certain suspicions that were beginning to
arise within my mind.

Ten minutes sufficed us to cover the stretch of oil-smooth sea that lay
between the _Mercury_ and the _Braave_, when, passing beneath the stern
of the latter in order to reach her starboard side, I again read her
name, carved in four-inch letters upon her counter, with the word
"Amsterdam", her port of registry. Then, as we cleared her stern and
ranged up alongside her starboard main chains, with her green side
staring at us in the full blaze of the tropical sunlight, my eye was
again caught by a dark, rusty-looking stain beneath one of her scuppers,
similar to what I had already observed through the _Mercury's_
telescope. I recognised it for what it was, and what I had all along
suspected, but had refused to acknowledge it to be--blood, dried blood,
that had been shed so freely that it had poured out through the scupper-
holes! The man who was pulling stroke, standing up in