‘Back water!’ I cried out, for the swell had sheered the boat so as to put the companion way betwixt us and the figure. I stood up and looked. The man was seated as before, though spite of the sure and dreadful expression of death his famine-white face bore, spite of my being certain in my own mind that he was as dead as the creature whose face had glimmered out upon the black water in the hold, yet the cry to us had been so unmistakably real, had come so unequivocally, not indeed only from the wreck, but from the very part of the hulk on which the corpse was seated, that I found myself staring at him as though I expected that he would look round at us. ‘There’s no one alive yonder, men,’ said I, seating myself afresh. ‘What was it that spoke, think ’ee, sir?’ exclaimed the man in the bow, bringing his eyes full of awe away from the sheer hulk to my face. ‘Mr. Monson, sir, I ’umbly beg pardon,’ exclaimed Muffin, in the greasy deferential tone he was used to employ when in the cabin, ‘but there must be something living on board that ship, unless it were a sperrit.’ ‘A spirit, you fool!’ cried I in a passion, ‘what d’ye mean by such talk? There’s nothing living on that wreck, I tell you. Jump aboard anyone of you who doubts me and he can judge for himself.’ Muffin shook his head; the others writhed uneasily on the thwarts of the boat. ‘Cutbill and I overhauled the vessel; she’s full of water. What is on her deck you can see for yourselves, and nothing but a fish could live below. Isn’t that right, Cutbill?’ ‘Ay, sir,’ he answered; and then under his breath, ‘but what voice was it that hailed us then!’ ‘Come, give way!’ I cried, ‘they’ll be growing impatient aboard the yacht.’ The oars dipped, feathered, flashed, and in an instant the blue sides of the smart and sparkling little craft were buzzing and spinning through it in foam. It was like coming from a graveyard to the sight of some glittering, cheerful, tender poetic pageant to carry the eye from the hull to the yacht. She seemed clad by the contrast with new qualities of beauty. You found the completest expression of girlish archness in the curtseying of her shapely bows, with a light at her forefoot like a smile on the lip when she lifted her yellow sheathing there, pouting, as one might say, from the caressing kiss of the blue brine, to gleam like gold for a moment to the sunlight. We swept alongside and I sprang on board. ‘The poor creature is dead, I suppose?’ exclaimed Wilfrid, inspecting the wreck through a binocular glass. ‘Yes,’ I answered, ‘dead as the dead can be; too dead to handle, faith. I might have sought in his pockets for some hints to found a report upon, but his face had the menace of a fierce whisper.’ ‘It seems cruel to leave him unburied,’ said Miss Laura, with her soft eyes full of pity, and the emotions begotten of the presence of death. ‘That hulk must soon go to pieces,’ said I, ‘and then she will give him a sailor’s funeral.’