Among the latter may be numbered the curious discovery in the North Atlantic of a nameless sailing ship, without cargo, identifying papers or crew, but sound from truck to kelson, and with her two life-boats stowed neatly inboard and a half-finished meal on the cabin table. Experts examined this vessel when brought into port, but so far have been utterly unable to offer any solution or discover any clue, beyond the fact that she was built and fitted out in some American port and carried an unusually large crew. Another similar mystery was the disappearance of a French vessel while on a voyage to New Orleans and the discovery eleven months afterwards that she had called for water and food at a small port on the Pacific coast of South America. No further trace has so far come to light, nor the reason for her changing course and rounding Cape Horn. A mystery which remains a mystery to the end of the chapter is likely to be irritating to the imaginative mind, but to the following occurrence there came a solution after the lapse of a few weeks. THE SPECTRE OF THE GOODWINS It was a pitch-black night, with fine rain driving up from the south-west. The summer gale which had raged for the past twenty-four hours had blown itself out, and although the steep seas still retained their night-caps, the wind came only in fitful gusts. Away to starboard an indistinct blur of white foam stretched athwart the sea and the dull roar from the maelstrom of the Goodwins rolled across the miles of intervening water. The armed trawler _Curlew_ bravely shouldered her way through each green comber as it rose to meet her, lurching over the seas in a smother of spray. Oilskinned figures moved warily along the life-lines, for when a wave struck her tons of water swept across her slanting decks, submerging the bulwarks and causing the sturdy ship to groan and tremble from stem to stern. In the little bridge-house the dim light from the binnacle shone on the hard wet face of the commanding officer, who watched the seas as they rose up ahead, giving directions to the man at the wheel, and all the while keeping a watchful eye on the distant blur of foam covering the treacherous shoals.