I earnestly overhauled with my eyes the wallowing fabric as we approached her, but saving that lonely man motionless in his posture of slumber there was nothing to be distinguished outside the melancholy raffle of unrove rigging and ropes’ ends in the bow, vast rents in the planks of the deck, splinters of bulwark, stanchion, and the like. The fellow that pulled stroke was the big-whiskered man that acted as boatswain, named Cutbill. I said to him as he came stooping towards me for the sweep of his oar, ‘She’s so jagged the whole length of her broadside, that I believe her stern, low as it lies, will be the easiest and safest road to enter by.’ He looked over his shoulder and said, ‘Ay, sir. But there is no need for you to trouble to step aboard. I’ll overhaul her if you like, sir.’ ‘No, I’ll enter. It’s a break, Mr. Cutbill. But you will accompany me, for I may want help.’ He shook his head. ‘You’ll find nothing living there, sir.’ ‘No telling till we’ve found out anyway,’ said I. ‘Oars!’ I sung out. We floated under the wreck’s counter, hooked on, and, waiting for the lift of the swell, I very easily sprang from the boat’s gunwale to the taffrail of the hulk, followed by Cutbill. The decks had blown up, and the sort of drowning rolling of the hulk rendered walking exceedingly dangerous. The water showed black through the splintered chasms, with a dusky gleam in the swaying of it like window-glass on a dark night; and there was a strange noise of sobbing that was desperately startling, with its commingling of sounds like human groans, and hollow frog-like croakings, followed by blows against the interior caused by floating cargo driven against the side, as if the hull was full of half-strangled giants struggling to pound their way out of her. From the first great gap I looked down through I remember recoiling with a wildness that might easily have rolled me overboard to the sight of a bloated human face, with long hair streaming, floating on the surface of the water athwart the ragged orifice. It was like putting one’s eye to a _camera obscura_ and witnessing a sickening phantom of death, saving that here the horror was real, with the weeping noises in the hold to help it, and the great encompassing sea to sweep it into one’s very soul as a memory to ride one’s sleepless hours hag-like for a long term. We approached the figure of a man. He was seated on a three-legged stool, with his back resting against the companion. I stooped to look at his face. ‘Famine is the artist here!’ I cried instantly, springing erect. ‘My God! what incomparable anguish is there in that expression!’ ‘See, sir,’ cried the burly sailor by my side in a broken voice, and he pointed to a piece of leather that lay close beside the body. One end of which had been gnawed into pulp, which had hardened into iron again to the air and the sun. ‘Yet the letter we picked up,’ said I, ‘stated there was a cask of raw meat on board.’