When I arrived on the poop, I found the captain standing aft surrounded by a number of ladies, directing a binocular glass at the sea over the starboard bow. The chief mate at the head of the poop ladder was likewise staring into the same quarter, with Mr. Johnson alongside, bothering him with questions, and little Saunders on tip-toe, to see over the rail, fanning his face with a large flapping black wide-awake. I stepped to the side to look, and saw some object about a mile distant, that emitted a wet flash of light from time to time. I asked the mate to lend me his glass, and at once made the thing out to be a capsized hull of a vessel of about eighty tons. She floated almost to the line of her yellow sheathing, and the gold-like metal rising wet to the sun from the soft sweep of the blue brine darted flashes as dazzling as flame from the mouth of a cannon. I returned the glass to Mr. Prance. ‘She has not been long in that condition, I think?’ said I. ‘Not twenty-four hours, I should say,’ he answered. ‘I see no wreckage floating about her.’ ‘Nor I. If she had a crew on board when she turned turtle,’ I said, ‘she may have clapped down upon them as you imprison flies under a tumbler.’ ‘God bless us, what a dreadful death to die!’ cried little Saunders. ‘I can conceive of no agony to equal that of being in a cabin in a sinking ship and going down with her, and _knowing_ that she is under water and still settling.’ The little chap shuddered and pulled out a great blue pocket-handkerchief, with which he dried his forehead. ‘How long could a man live in a cabin under water?’ asked Mr. Johnson. ‘Long enough to come off with his life,’ answered the mate, bringing the glass from his eye and looking at Mr. Johnson. ‘I’ll give you a queer yarn in a few words, sir; wild enough to furnish out an A1 copper-bottomed sea-tale to some one of you literary gentlemen. A small vessel was dismasted ’twixt Tariffa and Tangier in the middle of the Gut there. All her crew saving one man got away in the boat. The fellow that was left lay drunk in the cabin. A sea shifted her cargo; shortly after she capsized and went down. A few days later, that same ship floated up from the bottom of the sea on to the shore near Tangier. She was boarded, and they found the man alive in the cabin.’ ‘What was the vessel’s cargo, Mr. Prance?’ inquired little Saunders. ‘Oil and brandy, sir.’ ‘Don’t you think,’ exclaimed Mr. Johnson, ‘that your story is one that would be very acceptable to the marines, Mr. Prance, but that would not be believed by your sailors were you to tell it to them?’ Here the captain, who had been slowly coming forward, accompanied by half-a-dozen ladies, interrupted us. ‘Mr. Prance.’ ‘Sir?’ ‘That object yonder is a danger in the way of navigation. I think it would be kind in us to send a shot at it.’ ‘Ay, ay, sir.’