“Certainly I boarded her,” continued Greaves. “It is by no means so dusky inside the cave as it appeared to be when viewed from the outside. I left a hand to attend the boat and took three men aboard. I believe I should not have had the spirit to enter that ship alone. By Isten! but she did show very ghastly in that gloom--very ghastly and cold and silent, with the appalling silence of entombment. No noise--I mean that faint, thunderous noise of distant surf--no noise of breakers penetrated. Well, to be sure, by listening you might now and again catch a drowning, bubbling, gasping sound, stealthily washing through the black water in the cave along the sides of the ship; but I tell you that I found the stillness inside that cave heart-shaking. I went right aft and looked over the stern, and _there_ it was like gazing into a tunnel. How far did the cavern extend abaft? There would be one and an easy way of finding that out--by rowing into the blackness and burning a flare in the boat. This I thought I would do if I could make time. “The ship was a broad, handsome vessel, her scantling that of a second-rate; she mounted a few carronades and swivels: clearly a merchantman, and, as I supposed, a plate-ship. She had a large roundhouse, and steered by a very beautifully and curiously wrought wheel, situated a little forward of the entrance to the roundhouse. It did not occur to me that she might be a rich ship until I looked into the roundhouse; _then_ I found myself in a marine palace in its way. Enough of that. The sight of the furniture determined me upon attempting a brief search of her hold. The impulse was idle curiosity--I should have believed it so anyway. I had not a fancy in my head of any sort beyond a swift glance of curiosity at what might be under hatches. Yet, somehow, before I had fairly made up my mind to look into the hold, a singular hope, a singular resolution had formed, flushing me from head to foot as though I had drained a bottle of wine. ‘Look if that lamp be trimmed,’ said I to a man, pointing to one of a row of small, wonderfully handsome brass lamps, hanging from the upper deck of the roundhouse. No, it was not trimmed. The rest of them were untrimmed. We searched about for oil, for wicks, for candles, for anything that would show a light. Then said I to two of the men, ‘Jump into the boat and fetch me a lantern and candle. Tell the mate that I am stopping to overhaul this ship for her papers, to get her story.’