Suddenly, as the ship rose, I distinctly beheld something black out away upon the horizon, showing just under the foot of the foresail.  It vanished instantly; but I was not satisfied, and went for the glass which lay upon the brackets just under the companion.  I then told the man who was steering to keep her away a couple of points for a few moments; and resting the glass against the mizzen-royal backstay, pointed it toward the place where I had seen the black object.

For some moments nothing but sea or sky filled the field of the glass as the ship rose and fell; but all at once there leaped into this field the hull of a ship, deep as her main-chains in the water, which came and went before my eye as the long seas lifted or dropped in the foreground.  I managed to keep her sufficiently long in view to perceive that she was totally dismasted.

“It’s a wreck,” said I, turning to the man:  “let her come to again and luff a point.  There may be living creatures aboard of her.”

Knowing what sort of man Captain Coxon was, I do not think that I should have had the hardihood to luff the ship a point out of her course had it involved the bracing of the yards; for the songs of the men would certainly have brought him on deck, and I might have provoked some ugly insolence.  But the ship was going free, and would head more westerly without occasioning further change than slightly slackening the weather-braces of the upper yards.  This I did quietly; and the dismantled hull was brought right dead on end with our flying jib-boom.  The men now caught sight of her, and began to stare and point; but did not sing out, as they saw by the telescope in my hand that I perceived her.  The breeze unhappily began to slacken somewhat, owing perhaps to the gathering heat of the sun; our pace fell off:  and a full hour passed before we brought the wreck near enough to see her permanently,—­for up to this she had been constantly vanishing under the rise of the swell.  She was now about two miles off, and I took a long and steady look at her through the telescope.  It was a black hull with painted ports.  The deck was flush fore and aft, and there was a good-sized house just before where the mainmast should have been.  This house was uninjured, though the galley was split up, and to starboard stood up in splinters like the stump of a tree struck by lightning.  No boats could be seen aboard of her.  Her jib-boom was gone, and so were all three masts,—­clean cut off at the deck, as though a hand-saw had done it; but the mizzenmast was alongside, held by the shrouds and backstays, and the port main and fore shrouds streamed like serpents from her chains into the water.  I reckoned at once that she must be loaded with timber, for she never could keep afloat at that depth with any other kind of cargo in her.

She made a most mournful and piteous object in the sunlight, sluggishly rolling to the swell which ran in transparent volumes over her sides and foamed around the deck-house.  Once when her stern rose, I read the name Cecilia in broad white letters.