ed nose, then the white and staring eyes,
that gazed blankly over the engulfing waves. The figure-head was Trajan
again, at full length, with the costume of an Indian hunter, and the
face of a Roman sage; this image lingered longer, and then vanished,
like Victor Hugo's Gilliatt, by cruel gradations. Meanwhile the gilded
name upon the taffrail had slowly disappeared also; but even when the
ripples began to meet across her deck, still her descent was calm. As
the water gained, the hidden fire was extinguished, and the smoke, at
first densely rising, grew rapidly less. Yet when it had stopped
altogether, and all but the top of the cabin had disappeared, there
came a new ebullition of steam, like a hot spring, throwing itself
several feet in air, and then ceasing.

As the vessel went down, several beams and planks came springing
endwise up the hatchway, like liberated men. But nothing had a stranger
look to me than some great black casks which had been left on deck.
These, as the water floated them, seemed to stir and wake, and to
become gifted with life, and then got into motion and wallowed heavily
about, like hippopotami or any unwieldy and bewildered beasts. At last
the most enterprising of them slid somehow to the bulwark, and, after
several clumsy efforts, shouldered itself over; then others bounced
out, eagerly following, as sheep leap a wall, and then they all went
bobbing away, over the dancing waves. For the wind blew fresh
meanwhile, and there were some twenty sail-boats lying-to with reefed
sails by the wreck, like so many sea-birds; and when the loose stuff
began to be washed from the deck, they all took wing at once, to save
whatever could be picked up,--since at such times, as at a
conflagration on land, every little thing seems to assume a value,--and
at last one young fellow steered boldly up to the sinking ship itself,
sprang upon the vanishing taffrail for one instant, as if resolved to
be the last on board, and then pushed off again. I never saw anything
seem so extinguished out of the universe as that great vessel, which
had towered so colossal above my little boat; it was impossible to
imagine that she was all there yet, beneath the foaming and indifferent
waves. No effort has yet been made to raise her; and a dead eagle seems
to have more in common with the living bird than has now this submerged
and decaying hulk with the white and winged creature that came sailing
into our harbor on that summer day