“At last they sang out for me to keep from under, as they were ready to break in. Then came three or four quick blows, a section about two feet square was crushed in, and somehow I got out through the opening. I think I must have been almost shot out by the confined air that rushed out with a roar. At any rate, there was barely time for the men to drag me into their boat and push back a few yards from the wreck when she sank like a stone. The boat was spun around and around like a straw in the vortex that it made, and for a moment they were afraid that it was going to be sucked under. I knew nothing of this until afterwards, for I became unconscious the moment I got into the fresh air and out of the foul gases I had been breathing so long. When I recovered I was lying in a berth in the _Esmeralda’s_ cabin.” “The _Esmeralda’s_ cabin!” interrupted Breeze. “Was it this very brig, father?” "Yes; I was lying in the cabin of this very brig, which was bound for the west coast of Africa, with a cargo of salt fish from the Provinces. It seemed that, while lying becalmed that morning, they had drifted close to the wreck of the _Sea Robin_, and the mate, with a couple of men, had boarded it out of curiosity. They had got into their boat again to leave, without a suspicion that anybody was in her, when they heard the noise I made pounding with the old watch. The men said it was only rats, and wanted to go on; but the mate insisted on finding out what it really was. "All hands, from the captain down, did everything for me; but it was a long time before I recovered from the horror of those two days shut up with the rats in that wreck. I was always on the lookout for some vessel on which I might get a passage to the United States, but we only spoke two on the whole voyage. One of these was bound for South America and the other around the Horn, so I stuck by the brig. "We made a quick run out, discharged our cargo promptly, and tried to take in our return cargo of palm-oil quickly, so as to start back before the sickly season set in. Somehow, though, everything seemed to work against us. One delay followed another, until we had spent three months on the coast cruising from the mouth of one pestiferous river to another, picking up our cargo in small lots here and there.