CHAPTER XLI.

A WATERLOGGED VESSEL.

Descending the rocks, which were steep and rugged, we reached their base, where a dangerous and treacherous beach sloped abruptly down into the deep water. It was covered with frothy sea-weed, bright-colored shells, strange-looking pieces of blubber, and decayed fish of many kinds.

Over some large misshapen rocks, which were covered by masses of barnacles and long tangles of sea-weed that waved in the water, but which adhered to the stone with the tenacity of steel bands, we reached--but not without considerable difficulty, and being partly immersed in the foam that boiled over the reef connecting the islands--the wreck that lay hard and fast upon it.

By her build she was evidently a new Spanish brig of somewhere about one hundred and fifty tons burden, and straight as an arrow in her sheer stroke, which had been painted yellow.

Her masts were gone by the board, and her bowsprit had been snapped off near the cap. Every vestige of the bulwarks had long since been torn away by the waves that had swept over her; and the skeleton row of her timber-heads, the windlass-bitts, and the booby-hatch, alone remained.

Her hull had been swept of every thing else.

She had evidently been long tossing to and fro, perhaps for six months, exposed to wind and weather. Nearly every vestige of paint had long since been washed from her hull by the waves, or scorched from it by the sun.

Her copper was thickly encrusted with barnacles, and coated with long trailers of sea-weed.

Singularly lonely, silent, and desolate she looked, as she lay on the reef, heeled over to starboard, with the bleached or washed ends of her shrouds and rattlins hanging from the dead-eyes over the side channel-boards in the water; and then, to add to the effect of the whole, three huge and lazy albatrosses gorged with star-fish and blubber, alighted on her taffrail, and flapped their dusky wings with a melancholy booming sound.

As we clambered on board by the ruins of the main-rigging, which hung pendent over the port-side, an exclamation of disgust escaped even Antonio when we saw the miserable remains of a poor human being, hanging by the wasted and bony legs, which were jammed in the iron gear about the fore-channel; it had, when in life, been lashed thereto, and now hung pendent, with the head, arms, and body immersed in the water; and these relics had evidently been dragged about with the wreck exposed to the waves, the sun, the fish, and the sea-birds for many months.

Of the crew we saw no other traces, and their probable fate was left to gloomy conjecture.

Removing the booby-hatch, we descended into her cabin, and found it half full of water, amid which the débris of the lockers had been long washed to and fro. There were blankets and clothing, cushions and pillows, bottles, glasses, cigar-boxes, Spanish packs of cards having cudgels for clubs, _espados_ for spades; and there, too, were charts and books reduced to mere pulp by long immersion.

The skylight was gone; but on the cabin-windows we still saw the dead-lights, as those ports or shutters are named which are usually shipped in rough weather to prevent high seas from breaking in.

The place had a chill feeling--a dreary and desolate aspect; for many months the water had been washing there from bulkhead to bulkhead and from stem to stern.

With the aid of my hatchet we forced a passage into the bread-room, as the locker wherein bread or biscuit is usually kept is named. It was entirely lined with tin, to exclude rats; but this had failed to exclude water, for the bags of biscuit, which to us would have been more valuable than sacks of diamonds or doubloons, had all been reduced to mouldy pulp and paste long ago.

Antonio seemed in his element; his eyes sparkled with a lurid glare; his limbs appeared to dilate and strengthen as he hewed and hacked away at the panels and bulkheads in quest of food and plunder, so he soon forced his way through the fore and after holds, and, indeed, over all the wreck; while the blows of the hatchet, and the sound of his voice, as he shouted and swore to himself, sounded hollow and strange in the hitherto long-abandoned ship.

A little examination proved her to be a Spanish brig, timber laden, principally with mahogany, and completely waterlogged. Thus she could never sink.

She was probably from the Bay of Honduras. We found several coils of Manilla rope on board, and some cocoa-nuts entire. She was oak-built, copper-fastened, and coppered to the bends.

"She had not made the land in her last voyage," said Antonio; "and a storm must have overtaken and dismasted her at sea."

"How do you know this?" I asked.

"Because one anchor--her best bower--still remains in the bow, and the cables have not been bent, but are stowed in the tier below. Her working anchor and kedge have both gone or been sent overboard to lighten her."

And then, as if he had wasted time enough, Antonio descended to renew the ransacking of the vessel; and ere long I heard him utter a shrill howl of delight.

He had discovered a square box, entirely filled with case-bottles of Jamaica rum! To one who, like him, had been so long deprived of his favorite stimulants, this discovery was more valuable than a gold mine.

I cannot say that I shared his delight in this matter, knowing well that the wretch would drink to excess, and then there would be greater reason than ever to dread his presence.

Our investigation had occupied almost the entire day, and it was about the time of sunset when Antonio found his prize. Knowing well the danger of getting ashore in the dusk along the ridge of the reef and up the weed-covered rocks of the island, I urged the Cubano to return at once, as I had a dislike of remaining all night in a waterlogged wreck, which any rise of the wind or sea might take off the coast again; but Antonio only mocked me, and was deaf to my advice.

He drank at least a pint of rum in a few minutes, and this prostrated his energies for the time; so, leaving him half-seated in the water that washed and gurgled about the cabin, with his back propped against the after bulkhead, the spirit box placed between his legs, and a square case-bottle in each hand, I prepared to sheer off and get ashore ere worse came to pass.

All the plunder I brought away with me consisted of a book, which I found, half defaced by water, on a shelf, and a small sword, like a _couteau de chasse_, that hung on a hook in one of the cabin berths, and which, unseen by Antonio, I concealed in my trousers, as he had lost my hatchet somewhere in the fore-hold, and I had no other weapon with which to defend myself if attacked.

I had eaten nothing but half a cocoa-nut all day, and felt weak and giddy when lowering myself off the wreck by the main-chains.

In the tropics the sun sets rapidly, and already the reef was darkened by the shadows of the two islands between which it lay. Their rocks were black as marble; but the sea, and all the surf between them, were white as milk by the reflection of the snowy clouds on which the rising moon was shining.

The whole scene of the silent and waterlogged wreck was solemn and impressive; and a gloomy horror was added to it by the ghastly remains of the dead man, which hung and were washed to and fro alongside, head downward, from the fore-channel--swaying with a gurgling sound, as if he was essaying to rise from the water.

Shudderingly I turned away, and wading through the surf, clambered over the piles of slippery and weedy boulders, to regain the higher portion of the Island of Alphonso.

As I ascended, the voice of Antonio, now somewhat cracked and wavering, reached me, as he put his head above the booby-hatch, and sung a Spanish ditty, one verse of which ran thus:

"Companero, companero, She is gone that ruled my heart! Companero, companero, That was sorrow's deepest smart. But companero, companero, Here's the bota, drink your fill; For companero, companero, Wine's the cure for every ill!"

At this point of his song he suddenly vanished. Probably his foot slipped, and if so, he would fall souse into the water, which flooded all the cabin and companion-way. If stunned by the fall, or stupefied by the rum of which he had partaken so freely, he might lie there and drown.

But what was the fate of such a wretch to me? If I returned on board, could I save him? No; it was more than probable that in his intoxication he would assail me, and I might perish by his hand; so leaving the Cubano to his fate, I continued my ascent, until I reached the banana thicket, where my little hiding-place lay. There I placed the sword I had found beside me for security, and coiling myself up on my bed of dry leaves, strove to sleep, and dream of deliverance and of home. But the idea of Antonio perishing there in the wreck haunted me, and kept me long miserable and awake.