I wonder if they all scream--these ships that have lost their souls? Mine screamed. We heard her voice, like nothing I have ever heard before, when we rowed under her counter to read her name--the _Marionnette_ it was, of Halifax. I remember how it made me shiver, there in the full blaze of the sun, to her going on so, railing and screaming in that stark fashion. And I remember, too, how our footsteps, pattering through the vacant internals in search of that haggard utterance, made me think of the footsteps of hurrying warders roused in the night. And we found a parrot in a cage; that was all. It wanted water. We gave it water and went away to look things over, keeping pretty close together, all of us. In the quarters the table was set for four. Two men had begun to eat, by the evidences of the plates. Nowhere in the vessel was there any sign of disorder, except one sea chest broken out, evidently in haste. Her papers were gone and the stern davits were empty. That is how the case stood that day, and that is how it has stood to this. I saw this same _Marionnette_ a week later, tied up to a Hoboken dock, where she awaited news from her owners; but even there, in the midst of all the water-front bustle, I could not get rid of the feeling that she was still very far away--in a sort of shippish other-world. The thing happens now and then. Sometimes half a dozen years will go by without a solitary wanderer of this sort crossing the ocean paths, and then in a single season perhaps several of them will turn up: vacant waifs, impassive and mysterious--a quarter-column of tidings tucked away on the second page of the evening paper. That is where I read the story about the _Abbie Rose_. I recollect how painfully awkward and out-of-place it looked there, cramped between ruled black edges and smelling of landsman’s ink--this thing that had to do essentially with air and vast colored spaces. I forget the exact words of the heading--something like “Abandoned Craft Picked Up at Sea”--but I still have the clipping itself, couched in the formal patter of the marine-news writer: The first hint of another mystery of the sea came in today when the schooner _Abbie Rose_ dropped anchor in the upper river, manned only by a crew of one. It appears that the out-bound freighter _Mercury_ sighted the _Abbie Rose_ off Rock Island on Thursday last, acting in a suspicious manner. A boat-party sent aboard found the schooner in perfect order and condition, sailing under four lower sails, the topsails being pursed up to the mastheads but not stowed. With the exception of a yellow cat, the vessel was found to be utterly deserted, though her small boat still hung in the davits. No evidences of disorder were visible in any part of the craft. The dishes were washed up, the stove in the galley was still slightly warm to the touch, everything in its proper place with the exception of the vessel’s papers, which were not to be found.