something.  It appeared to me, now, as if the ship absolutely refused to move.  Go ahead she did, notwithstanding, though it was only her own length in five or six minutes.  My hasty glances told me that two more of these lengths would effect my purpose.  I scarce breathed, lest the vessel should not be steered with sufficient accuracy.  It was strange to me that Marble did not hail, and, fancying him asleep, I shouted with all my energy, in order to arouse him.  ‘What a joyful sound that will be in his ears,’ I thought to myself, though to me, my own voice seemed unearthly and alarming.  No answer came.  Then I felt a slight shock, as if the cut-water had hit something, and a low scraping sound against the copper announced that the ship had hit the wreck.  Quitting the wheel, I sprang into the waist, raising the kedge in my arms.  Then came the upper spars wheeling strongly round, under the pressure of the vessel’s bottom against the extremity of the lower mast.  I saw nothing but the great maze of hamper and wreck, and could scarcely breathe in the anxiety not to miss my aim.  There was much reason to fear the whole mass would float off, leaving me no chance of throwing the kedge, for the smaller masts no longer inclined in, and I could see that the ship and wreck were slowly separating.  A low thump on the bottom, directly beneath me, drew my head over the side, and I found the fore-yard, as it might be, a cock-bill, with one end actually scraping along the ship’s bottom.  It was the only chance I had, or was likely to have, and I threw the kedge athwart it.  Luckily, the hawser as it tautened, brought a fluke directly under the yard, within the Flemish horse, the brace-block, and all the other ropes that are fitted to a lower yard-arm.  So slow was the motion of the ship, that my grapnel held, and the entire body of the wreck began to yield to the pressure.  I now jumped to the jib-halyards and down-haul, getting that sail reduced; then I half-brailed the spanker; this was done lest my hold on the yard should give way.

I can say, that up to this instant, I had not even looked for Marble.  So intense had been my apprehensions of missing the wreck, that I thought of nothing else, could see nothing else.  Satisfied, however, that my fast would hold, I ran forward to look down on the top, that the strain of the hawser had brought directly under the very bow, over which it had fallen.  It was empty!  The object I had mistaken for Marble, dead or asleep, was a part of the bunt of the main-top-sail, that had been hauled down over the top-rim, and secured there, either to form a sort of shelter against the breaking seas, or a bed.  Whatever may have been the intention of this nest, it no longer had an occupant.  Marble had probably been washed away, in one of his adventurous efforts to make himself more secure or more comfortable.