ading the name _Mercedes_ in large white letters. Letting fly
my sheet, I caught the leeward chain-plates, and jumping on board with
the painter, I secured the same to a belaying-pin, and looked about me.

I was at once sensible that there was some water in the hold by the
peculiar motion of the vessel as she rose and fell to the seas that
underran her; but at the same time it was apparent that there could not
be anything like a dangerous quantity, otherwise the plane of the deck
would have floated much closer to the surface of the sea. Without
regarding the nationality of the name, it was clear to me that the
vessel was either a Portuguese or Italian trader by the rainbow
character of her paint-work, the slovenliness of the rigging, that was
yet almost intact upon the fore, and, in spite of the drenching that she
had received, the unmistakable evidences of dirt everywhere. There were
no boats left, but whether they had been crushed in the wreck of the
masts or had received the crew of the barkentine--for such I saw had
been her rig--I could not tell.

Entering the cabin, I overhauled the four state-rooms it contained,
finding in three of them nothing but such odds and ends as are peculiar
to sailors' chests, and in the fourth room, which had been used as a
pantry, quite an assortment of boxes and barrels of provisions, although
there was proof that some of them had been broken into and rummaged
quite recently.

Then I went on deck again and lifted off one of the main hatch covers.
No cargo of any nature was to be seen, nothing but a mass of black oily
water washing from side to side. It was plain that the vessel was in
ballast, that she had sprung a leak in the last gale of wind, that her
crew had become frightened, had given her up for lost, and taken to the
boats. It was also clear that the leak had stopped itself in some
manner--possibly when the old tub had ceased straining after the sea
went down--and that if I could pump out the hull I might be able to put
her before the wind by making sail on the fore, and so, with the
favoring trade winds, let the _Mercedes_ drift along to the port dead
away to leeward.

A sailor is never idle long after laying out his work. First I emptied
my boat of its water-breakers and provisions, then let it tow astern.
Next I got an axe out of the boatswain's locker and chopped away the
rigging that held the broken spars to the bark, then when the vessel was
clear I squared the topsa