In a general way, of course, the conclusion which I had arrived at was a sound one. Broadly speaking, it was certain that could I pass in a straight line from the centre to the circumference of that vast assemblage of wrecks I constantly would find vessels of newer build; and so at last, upon the outermost fringe, would come to the wrecks of ships belonging to my own day. But one weak point in my calculations was my inability to hold to a straight line, or to anything like one--because I had to advance from one wreck to another as they happened to touch or to be within jumping distance of each other, and therefore went crookedly upon my course and often fairly had to double on it. And another weak point was that the sea in its tempests recognizes no order of seniority, but destroys in the same breath of storm ships just beginning their lives upon it and ships which have withstood its ragings for a hundred years: so that I very well might find--as I actually did find in the case of the _Wasp_--a comparatively modern-built vessel lying hemmed in by ancient craft, survivals of obsolete types, which had lingered so long upon the ocean that in their lives as in their deaths they merged and blended the present and the past. Thus a check was put upon my plan at the very outset; yet in a stolid sort of way--knowing that to give it up entirely would be to bring despair upon me, for I could not think of a better one--I tried still to hold by it: going on from the clumsy little old schooner to that one of two vessels lying beyond her which I fancied, though both of them belonged to a long past period, was the more modern-looking in her build. And so I continued to go onward over a dozen craft of one sort or another, holding by my rule--or trying to believe that I was holding by it, for all of the wrecks which I crossed were of an antique type--and now and then being left with no chance for choosing by finding open to me only a single way. And all this while the daylight was leaving me--the sun having gone down a ruddy globe beyond the forest of wrecks westward, and heavy purple shadows having begun to close down upon me through the low-hanging haze.