“I think it will be fun, Captain!  Lead on.”

Their course aft was attended with difficulty.  All along the deck was a thick mass of wreckage, broken casks, boxes, sections of spars, tattered canvas, and enough wire rope and other gear, it seemed, to encircle the world.  Amidships the hull sagged so that the deck was not three feet above the water.

Ascending the slight incline, Dan led the way to the entrance to the after cabin, containing four rooms—­two on either side of a corridor.  The cabins were just below the level of the deck but were not flooded.

“Now,” said Dan with his hand on the knob of the door at his right, “we will pay the Captain a visit.”

The bunk was mussed as though the skipper had left it hastily, but otherwise the apartment was in good order.  There was a little oaken desk containing a dictionary, several books on navigation, and writing appurtenances.  In the middle, on a piece of blotting-paper, was an overturned inkstand with a pen still in it.  Along the top were several photographs of home scenes, probably New England, and a picture of a rather comely young woman.

“And here’s a woman’s hat,” cried Virginia, picking from a corner a rather garishly trimmed creation.

Dan paused and looked at it.

“That’s good,” he said.  “His wife was evidently aboard.”  He opened a door leading into the next cabin.  “This was her room undoubtedly,” he said.

The girl peered in with a delighted expression.

“Why, of course.”  Her eyes took a quick inventory.  An ornate if cheap dressing-table!  Four waists on coat hangers!  Four skirts, beautifully hung!  And what a litter of brushes and things on the floor!  She turned to Dan, who had not entered, but was standing in the doorway, smiling.  “It must have been perfectly maddening for the good lady of the ship to leave all this behind.”  She walked to the dressing-table and peered into the mirror.  It must be said she saw a girl whom under other circumstances she would hardly have recognized.  Her heavy hair was dishevelled.  Her long, blue broadcloth ulster was stained with salt water and altogether out of shape.  A great black smudge ran along her cheek, and on her chin was a deep red scratch.

She looked at Dan from out the mirror, blushing.

“I am afraid I should compare rather unfavorably with the Captain’s lady.  I think, first of all, I shall sit right down and do my hair.  But no—­of course not now.”  She opened her eyes wide.

“Oh, yes, you can,” laughed Dan.  “I am going to leave you now and look about the ship.”

“Oh, no, you’re not,” exclaimed the girl; “you’re not to leave me alone on this horrid ship just yet.  The hair can wait.  I’ll go with you.  If everything is as nice as this cabin I shall feel quite at home.”

The cabin opposite the Captain’s had been the mate’s, and behind it was the mess cabin.  Here the greater part of crockery and glass was shattered on the floor.  An overturned bird-cage with a dead canary in it lay under the table.