Once only was I aroused from this stupor of spirit that went with my vigorous yet apathetic bodily action. Just at sunset one evening I sighted a vessel of some sort far ahead of me--a black mass looming uncertainly against the rich glow of crimson that filled the west--and for some reason or another I took into my head the fancy that I was nearing open water and that this was not a wreck but a living ship on board of which I would find living men: and at the thought of meeting with live men again I fairly cried with joy. Then darkness fell and shut her out from me; leaving me so eager that I could not sleep for thinking of her, and almost tempting me to press on through the night that I might be close up to her by dawn. But when in the first faint grey light of early morning I made her out again, and saw that she was in just the same position and at just the same distance ahead of me, I was almost as sorry as I would have been had she vanished; for I knew that had she been a living ship in that long night-time she would have sailed away. And by noon, being then close upon her, I could see that she was floating bottom upwards: and so knew certainly that she was only a dead wreck drifting in slowly to take her place among the dead wrecks which I had left behind me; and beyond her, instead of open water, I saw only the weed--covered ocean stretching onward unbroken until it was lost in the golden haze. Even then, though, I had a foolish hope that there might be living men clinging to her, and I edged my boat off its course a little so that I might run close under her stern. But no one showed on her hull as I neared her, and only my own voice broke the heavy silence as I crazily hailed her again and again. And then I fell into a dull rage with her, so weary was I of my loneliness and so bitter was my disappointment at finding her deserted--until suddenly a very different train of emotions was aroused in me as I made out slowly the weathered inverted lettering on her up-tilting stern, and so read her name there: _Golden Hind_! Like a flash I had before me clearly all the details of my last moments aboard of her: my quick sharp words with Captain Luke, my step backward with my arms up as he and the mate pressed upon me, the smasher that I got in on the mate's jaw, the crack on my own head that stunned me--and then my revival of consciousness as I found myself adrift in the ocean and saw the brig sailing away. And while these thoughts crowded upon me my boat went onward through the weed slowly--and presently I had again parted company with the _Golden Hind_, and this time for good and all.