"Man! You look awful. I tuk you for a ghost," he gasped in a whisper. "You're nearly as bad yourself, but I took the cream of it. Now let us see what's what." The mate's experienced eye showed him at once that the condition of the ship was not due to storm or accident. She had been deliberately stripped of everything that could be turned to account elsewhere. She was bare as a board,--not a rope nor a spar was left. The hatches were closed and looked as though they had not been touched for years. They came to the fore-hatch leading down to the fo'c's'le, and he hauled it up with some difficulty and looked suspiciously down into the darkness within. "Below there!" he cried, in a repressed hollow voice. But only the echoes answered him. They passed the main-hatch leading to the hold, and went along, past a grated skylight thick with green mould, to the covered gangway leading to the officers' quarters. The doors were closed and bolted with rusty bolts. There could not by any possibility be anyone below, not anyone alive, that is. Macro wasted no breath here, when they had managed to undo the bolts, but he visibly hesitated. Wulf stepped down into the cabin, and he followed. Just bare walls, nothing more. Table, stools, lamps, everything movable or unscrewable had been carried away. In the four small rooms adjacent there were just four empty bunks and not a thing besides. "Gosh, but it's queer!" whispered Macro. "Mebbe they're all lying dead in the hold." "We'll make sure," and they went up on deck again, and with some labour, for the wood had swelled and stuck, got up the main hatch and dropped down into the hold. But that was bare like the rest. The ship was as empty as a drum. "Not so much as a rat, b' Gosh!" said the mate, with recovered spirits, seeing no sign of dead men or ghosts. "What do you make of it?" asked Wulf. "She's been stripped bare, that's plain. But why, beats me." "Anyway, there's no objection to our stopping here now, I suppose. Bare bunks will be drier than the sand over there." "That's so.... And I'm thinking that if we can bring over some of the stuff from that big pile out yonder we can make ourselves mighty comfortable here." "We can start on that tomorrow. We've done enough for one day." "We'll make a raft, like old Robinson Crusoe, and bring the stuff right down to the spit yonder," said Macro, waxing quite cheerful at the prospect. "Then we'll make a smaller raft to bring it aboard here." "We'd better walk along that spit tomorrow and see if there's any opening to the sea." "We can do that, but I doubt there's not, else this water wouldn't be so cold, and there'd be some movement in it. It's all dead like everything else." They spent the rest of the daylight poking into every corner of the ship, and in the dark fo'c's'le Macro made a find of surpassing worth.