'I went aboard of her this morning,' said he, causing me to stop by halting and looking towards the vessel as though he would have me observe her whilst he talked. 'She is well worth a visit. Half of her crew are Kanakas, and the remainder Yankees, and a wild, queer, hairy lot they are. The captain's a Quaker, a strange, tall, formal fellow, buttoned up, lean and yellow, and thee's and thou's you; most unlike a seaman of any I ever saw. He was very civil though, mighty communicative. I sat an hour in his little cabin and 'twas as good as going awhaling to hear him. Such an array of harpoons and lances, decks dark with the mess of blubber boiling--'trying out' the captain called it. If you want to agreeably pass an hour and forget that you're in a land of smells and noise, visit her.' I answered it was probable I would do so. 'Not that she's a nosegay,' said he, with a short, sarcastic laugh, 'but there's nothing Malay in the odour, nothing Dutch. The captain related an odd incident that happened whilst he was off the Horn, a bit south of it I think.' Here he stepped out and I strolled by his side, pricking my ears, for there was a magic in the name of Cape Horn that never failed to arrest my attention. 'She'd been fishing in the South Seas and finding no quarry was coming into this ocean. She was running before a strong gale of wind off--I forget the name of the island; it lies south of the Horn. The land, coated with ice, stretched along their starboard beam; the captain had no notion he was so close in. He was looking at the land through his telescope when, in a sudden flaw that thinned the weather out into a momentary brilliance, he caught sight of a large dismasted ship upright on her keel upon a huge projection of ice that fell sheer to the wash of the surf. He reckons the height of cliff on which that hull was poised about thirty feet. How devilish odd! You can figure ships in many situations, but how in ghosts are they going to cradle themselves on an elevation of thirty or forty feet?' When he said this I stopped dead; a fancy then, at that instant, flashed into me in pang after pang as though every drop of blood in my veins was living fire. It brought me to a stand just as if I had been paralysed, or struck by lightning. Presently looking at him and rather gasping than speaking, I said: 'A dismasted ship, was it? On an island south of the Horn, did he say? Why, my God, I wonder--I wonder----' 'What's the matter? What's there in this to---- I hope I---- Catch hold of my arm!' exclaimed the colonel, staring at me with astonishment. 'What's it--sunstroke? Not under your umbrella?' And he directed his aquiline nose and keen blue eyes right up into the sky; then put his arm through mine, and we walked slowly, he meanwhile surveying me askant with every mark of amazement.