Allen dived below, brought up the binoculars, and scanned the vessel. "By Jove!" he cried, "she's in a nice mess. Her bowsprit is carried away, her foretopmast too, and her jib's streaming away like a flag. Hallo! and part of her stem and bulwarks have gone." "Collision." It was Jim's voice. He had just come on deck, and his quick eye at once realised the brig's mishap. Then he looked at her intently for some moments, and spoke again, in eager tones for him-- "Derelict." "So she is," cried Allen. "We'll get out the boat and board her. Do you think the sea is too high, Jim?" Jim said nothing. He was quite ready to risk his life in a cockle-shell in a heavy sea, as all fishermen of the Doggerbank must be. He was not the man to refuse to do what his employer wished, unless the danger were very great indeed. He looked round at the sea, then nodded his head affirmatively. "I don't think it's safe," said Carew. "In the first place, see how low that brig is in the water; she may go down at any moment, and the sea is very tricky to-day. I grant you it does not seem so very rough just now, but every half-hour or so there have been some rather dangerous rollers. One passed by us just before you came on deck." But Allen's spirit of adventure was up. "Oh, nonsense!" he cried; "I'm going to see what she is. She may be worth standing by for salvage. Run down a bit nearer to her--that's it. Now let's heave-to--so. Now overboard with the dinghy, Jim. You stay behind and mind the yacht, Carew." Jim and Allen waited for a "smooth," seized the dinghy, dexterously launched her, and leaping in nimbly, pulled away from the yacht--a feat that looks easy on paper, but requires nerve and skill to perform in a heavy sea. "If you drift away too far, let draw your jib and sail up to us," shouted Allen, as he went away. Carew stood on the deck of the yacht, which now rose and fell on the seas with the easy motion of a vessel that is hove-to, and watched the tiny boat, so frail and yet so buoyant, so far safer than she seemed, as she leapt from wave to wave. The dinghy was close to the brig. In another moment the men would have boarded her, when Carew perceived, to his horror, a huge roller coming up--a steep mass of water, with overhanging, breaking crest, such as are met with on the edge of shallows. It reached the yacht and hurled her high up; then dropped her again into the trough of the sea with a shock almost as violent as if she had struck a rock. The giant wave thundered by the sturdy little vessel without injuring her. But the dinghy--where was she? Carew strained his eyes in her direction. First the boat was hidden from him by the intervening wave; then he saw her for a moment floating on the top of a sea, some forty yards away, bottom up. He thought, too, he could distinguish a man's head in the water near her. The derelict had disappeared. Waterlogged as she was, it had only needed that last great sea to send her down bodily.