s--ships of the olden time, with enormously high
poops, which were the stern part of old-fashioned vessels, built 'way up
high like a four-story house. These two antiquated vessels were lying
side by side and close together, with their tall poops reaching far up
toward the surface of the sea; and right on top of them, resting partly
on one ship and partly on the other, was our brig, just as firmly fixed
as if she had been on the stocks in a shipyard!

"The whole thing was so wonderful that it nearly took away my breath. I
got around to the stern of the brig, and then I stared down at the two
vessels under her until I forgot there was anything else in this whole
world than those two great old-fashioned ships and myself. The more I
looked the more certain I became that no such vessels had floated on the
top of the sea for at least two hundred years. From what I had read
about old-time ships, and from the pictures I had seen of them, I made
up my mind that one of those vessels was an old Spanish galleon; and the
other one looked to me very much as if it were an English-built ship."

"And how did they ever happen to be wrecked there, side by side?" almost
gasped the young lady.

"Oh, they had been fighting," said John. "There could be no mistake
about that. They had been fighting each other to the death, and they had
gone down together, side by side. And there was our brig, two hundred
years afterwards, resting quietly on top of both of them.

"I was still wrapped up, body and soul, in this wonderful discovery,
when I heard a hail from the stern of the brig, and there was that
stock-broker, shouting to me to know what I was looking at. Of course
that put an end to my observations, and I paddled to the side and got on
board.

"'Lend me that box,' said the stock-broker, 'and let me get down on your
raft. What is it you've been looking at, and what did you see in that
box?'

"But he had got hold of the wrong man. 'No, sir,' said I. 'Find a box
for yourself, if you want one.' And I held mine so that he could not see
that the bottom of it was glass. Then the captain came along and told
him not to try to get down on that hatch, for if he did he would topple
into the water and get himself drowned, which would have been certain to
happen, for he could not swim. Then the hatch was hauled on deck, and I
went below with the captain to his cabin to tell him what I had seen.
The stock-broker tried awfully hard to come with us, but