“Certainly, sir,” said Sharpe sullenly, and went out of the cabin with serious thoughts of communicating to the other mates an alarming suspicion about Dodd, that now, for the first time, crossed his mind. But long habit of discipline prevailed, and he made all sail on the ship, and bore away for the Cape with a heavy heart. The sea was like a mill-pond, but in that he saw only its well-known treachery, to lead them on to this unparalleled act of madness: each sail he hoisted seemed one more agent of Destruction rising at his own suicidal command. Towards evening it became nearly dead calm. The sea heaved a little, but was waveless, glassy, and the colour of a rose, incredibly brave and delicate. The look-out reported pieces of wreck to windward. As the ship was making so little way, Dodd beat up towards them: he feared it was a British ship that had foundered in the storm, and thought it his duty to ascertain and carry the sad news home. In two tacks they got near enough to see with their glasses that the fragments belonged, not to a stranger, but to the _Agra_ herself. There was one of her waterbutts, and a broken mast with some rigging: and as more wreck was descried coming in at a little distance, Dodd kept the ship close to the wind to inspect it: on drifting near, it proved to be several pieces of the bulwark, and a mahogany table out of the cuddy This sort of flotsam was not worth delaying the ship to pick it up; so Dodd made sail again, steering now south-east. He had sailed about half a mile when the look-out hailed the deck again. “A man in the water!” “Whereabouts?” “A short league on the weather quarter.” “Oh, we can't beat to windward for _him,_” said Sharpe; “he is dead long ago.” “Holds his head very high for a corpse,” said the look-out. “I'll soon know,” cried Dodd. “Lower the gig; I'll go myself.” The gig was lowered, and six swift rowers pulled him to windward, while the ship kept on her course. It is most unusual for a captain to leave the ship at sea on such petty errands: but Dodd half hoped the man might be alive; and he was so unhappy; and, like his daughter, who probably derived the trait from him, grasped instinctively at a chance of doing kindness to some poor fellow alive or dead. That would soothe his own sore, good heart. When they had pulled about two miles, the sun was sinking into the horizon. “Give way, men,” said Dodd, “or we shall not be able to see him.” The men bent to their oars and made the boat fly. Presently the coxswain caught sight of an object bobbing on the water abeam. “Why, that must be it,” said he: “the lubber! to take it for a man's head. Why, it is nothing but a thundering old bladder, speckled white.” “What?” cried Dodd, and fell a-trembling. “Steer for it! Give way!” “Ay, ay, sir!” They soon came alongside the bladder, and the coxswain grabbed it. “Hallo! here's something lashed to it: a bottle!”