We laid hold of the frame, and after peering a bit, for this part of the cabin lay in gloom, we found that it stood in grooves, and without much trouble we slided it open, and the interior to as far as a bulkhead that walled off a bit of forecastle lay clear before us in the daylight shining through the main-hatch. Here were a number of hammocks dangling from the deck, and some score or more of seamen’s chests and bags in heaps, some of them split open, with quantities of rough wearing apparel scattered about, in so much that I never could have imagined a scene of wilder disorder, nor one more suggestive of hurry and panical consternation and delirious headlong behaviour. “Nobody here, sir,” said the mate. “No,” I answered; “I suppose her people left her in their boats, and that one of the wretches who were forced to remain behind wrote the letter we received the other night.” “At sea,” said the mate, “there is no imagining how matters come about. I allow that the three men have been taken off by some passing vessel. Anyway, we’ve done our bit, and the capt’n, I expect, ’ll be waiting for us. Thunder! how she rolls,” he cried, as a very heavy lurch sent us both reeling towards the side of the craft. “Hark!” cried I, “we are hailed from the deck.” “Below there!” shouted a voice in the companion hatch. “They’ve fired a gun aboard the Indiaman, sir, and have run the ensign up half-mast high. The weather looks mighty queer, sir.” “Ha!” cried the mate; “come along, Mr. Catesby.” We walked cautiously and with difficulty aft, gained the companion ladder and ascended. My instant glance went to the _Ruby_. She had furled her mainsail and fore and mizzen topgallant-sails, hauled down her lighter staysails and big standing jib, and as I glanced at her a gun winked in a quarter-deck port, and the small thunder of it rolled sulkily up against the wind. In fact, whilst we were below, the breeze had chopped clean round and the _Ruby_ was to leeward of the wreck, with a very heavy swell rolling along its former course, the wind dead the other way, beginning to whiten the ridges on each huge round-backed fold, and a white thickness—a flying squall of vapour it looked to me, with a seething and creaming line of water along the base of it as though it was something solid that was coming along—sweeping within half-a-mile of the wreck right down upon us. The mate sent a look at it and uttered a cry. “Haul the boat alongside,” he shouted to the fellows in her. “Handsomely now, lads. Stand by to jump into her,” he cried to the seaman who had been the first to spring on board the wreck with the end of the line.