The mate walked aft. ‘Down hellum,’ he exclaimed to the fellow who was steering. The wheel was put over and the bottle was brought almost directly in a line with the yacht. The topgallant-sail ‘lifted,’ but what air blew was abaft the beam and the distance was too short to render necessary the handling of the braces and sheets. Crimp went a little way forward and hailed the forecastle, and presently a man stood ready at the gangway with a canvas bucket slung at the end of a line. A very small matter will create a great deal of interest at sea. Had the approaching bottle been a mermaid the group of sailors could not have observed it with livelier attention nor awaited its arrival with brisker expectations. Presently _splash_! the bottle was cleverly caught, hauled up, dried and brought aft. ‘It’s not been in the water long,’ said I; ‘the wooden plug in the mouth looks fresh.’ ‘Mr. Crimp, sing out for a corkscrew,’ cried Wilfrid. ‘No good in that,’ cried I; ‘break the thing. That will be the speediest way to come at its contents.’ I held the bottle to the sun a moment, but the glass was thick and black, and revealed nothing. I then knocked it against the rail, the neck fell and exposed a letter folded as you double a piece of paper to light your pipe with. I pulled it out and opened it; Miss Laura peeped over one shoulder, Wilfrid over the other; his respirations swift, almost fierce. It was just the thing to put some wild notions about the ‘Shark’ into his head. From the forecastle the sailors were staring with all their eyes. The paper was quite dry; I opened it carefully with an emotion of awe, for trifling as the incident was apparently, yet to my fancy there was the mystery and the solemnity of the ocean in it too. Indeed, you thought of it as having something of the wonder of a voice speaking from the blue air when your eye sought the liquid expanse out of whose vast heart the tiny missive had been drawn. It was a rude, hurried scrawl in lead pencil, and ran thus: ‘_Brig Colossus. George Meadows, Captain. Waterlogged five days--all hands but two dead; fast breaking up. No fresh water. Raw pork one cask. Who finds this for God’s sake report._’ The word September was added, but the writer had omitted the date, probably could not remember it after spelling the name of the month. I gave Crimp the note that he might take it forward and read it to the men, telling him to let me have it again. ‘They will all have perished by this time, no doubt,’ said Wilfrid in his most raven-like note.