t that, for there had been times during the last
three days when it was a question whether our own barque would ever see
land again. For thirty-six hours we had kept her nose to it, and if the
_Mary Sinclair_ had not been as good a seaboat as ever left the Clyde,
we could not have gone through. And yet here we were at the end of it
with the loss only of our gig and of part of the starboard bulwark.
It did not astonish us, however, when the smother had cleared away, to
find that others had been less lucky, and that this mutilated brig
staggering about upon a blue sea and under a cloudless sky, had been
left, like a blinded man after a lightning flash, to tell of the terror
which is past. Allardyce, who was a slow and methodical Scotchman,
stared long and hard at the little craft, while our seamen lined the
bulwark or clustered upon the fore shrouds to have a view of the
stranger. In latitude 20 degrees and longitude 10 degrees, which were
about our bearings, one becomes a little curious as to whom one meets,
for one has left the main lines of Atlantic commerce to the north.
For ten days we had been sailing over a solitary sea.

"She's derelict, I'm thinking," said the second mate.

I had come to the same conclusion, for I could see no signs of life
upon her deck, and there was no answer to the friendly wavings from our
seamen. The crew had probably deserted her under the impression that
she was about to founder.

"She can't last long," continued Allardyce, in his measured way.
"She may put her nose down and her tail up any minute. The water's
lipping up to the edge of her rail."

"What's her flag?" I asked.

"I'm trying to make out. It's got all twisted and tangled with the
halyards. Yes, I've got it now, clear enough. It's the Brazilian flag,
but it's wrong side up."

She had hoisted a signal of distress, then, before her people had
abandoned her. Perhaps they had only just gone. I took the mate's
glass and looked round over the tumultuous face of the deep blue
Atlantic, still veined and starred with white lines and spoutings of
foam. But nowhere could I see anything human beyond ourselves.

"There may be living men aboard," said I.

"There may be salvage," muttered the second mate.

"Then we will run down upon her lee side, and lie to." We were not more
than a hundred yards from her when we swung our foreyard aback, and
there we were, the barque and the brig, ducking and bowing like two
clo