"Do you see that swarm of sharks crowding round the boat, Sir Edgar?" said I. "Take my word for it, there is a corpse--perhaps several--in her, and I am glad that the ladies are not on deck. Lay aft here, lads, to the main-braces, and back the mainyard. Ease your helm down, and steer up alongside her,"--to the man at the wheel. "Stand by, one hand, to jump down into the boat with a rope's-end and make fast." We were now so close to the little craft that, with the small air there was abroad, my voice, as I addressed the men, could have been distinctly heard at a considerable distance beyond her; and there is no doubt that it and the answering cries of the crew reached the ears of the castaway whom we had already seen; for as, in obedience to her helm, the bows of the barque swept slowly round towards the boat, a figure--a ghastly figure, with scarce a semblance of humanity remaining to it--rose up in the stern-sheets and looked at us. I shall never forget the sight, to my dying day. It was a man, clad in the remains of a shirt, and a pair of once blue cloth trousers that had become a dirty, colourless grey by long exposure to the sun and frequent saturation with salt-water. The head was bare, and thatched with a thick shock of grey, matted hair that still retained a streak of brown in it here and there to tell what its original colour had been; and the face was shrouded in a dense growth of matted grey beard and whisker; the skin, where exposed, was scorched to a deep purple red by the fierce rays of the sun. All this, however, was as nothing compared with the gauntness and emaciation of the man. The face, or at least that portion of it which was not hidden by the jungle of beard, was that of a death's head, a fleshless skull with a skin of blistered parchment strained so tightly over it that the cheek-bones seemed to be on the point of breaking through; while the eyes, but for the sparkle of the fever in them, would have been invisible, so deeply were they sunk within their sockets. The rest of his frame was evidently in like condition; his bare arms and exposed shanks seeming literally to be nothing but skin and bone, without a particle of flesh upon them. For a space of, perhaps, ten seconds, this grisly phantom stood motionless in the boat, staring blankly at us; then, when the ship was within some twenty fathoms of him, he threw his gaunt, bony arms above his head, and with a wild, eldritch yell, such as I had never heard before, and hope never to hear again, he half sprang, half tumbled over the side of the boat into the water, and, with a frenzied energy such as few sound, strong men could have exhibited, struck out for the ship.