Technical measures are discussed and a plan of operations agreed. At half-flood there will be water for us alongside, and a 'lift' can be tried. Number one hold is good and tight, but still has a bulk of water to steady her on the ledge; number two is clear and buoyant; three has the obstinate leak; the engine-room is undamaged, but water makes through in moderate quantity. Number four--"the bulkhead is bulged in like the bilge of a cask, but that cement we put down last week has set pretty well, and the struts and braces should hold." Number five? There is no number five, most of it lies on deep bottom off the Heads, some miles away! With his colleague, the commander puts off to the wreck, to assess the prospects, and we have opportunity to note the inboard trim of her derelict posts and quarters. Davits, swung outboard as when the last of her crew left her, stand up in unfamiliar dejection, the frayed ends and bights of the boat-falls dangling overside and thrumming on the rusty hull. The boat-deck shows haste and urgency in the litter of spars and tackle thrown violently aside: a seaman's bag with sodden pitiful rags of apparel lies awry on the skids, marking some cool and forethinking mariner denied a passage for his goods. Living-rooms and crew quarters show the indications of sudden call, in open desks--a book or two cast side, quick-thrown bedspreads, an array of clothing on a line; the range-guards in the cook's galley have caught the tilt of pots and mess-kits as they slid alee in the grounding. The bridge, with chart and wheelhouse open to the wind and spray, and sea-gear adrift and disordered, strikes the most desolating note in the abandon of it all. Tenantless and quiet, the same scene would be commonplace and understood in dock or harbour, with neighbourly shore structures to point a reason for absence of ship-life, but out here--the clear horizon of an open sea in view around, with vessels passing on their courses, the desertion of the main post seems final and complete, with no navigator at the guides and no hand at the wheel.