A wild cry of dismay arose from our decks, fore and aft, at this unlooked-for act of madness; and then, with one accord, all hands, myself included, dashed to the starboard quarter-boat and, while the first comers flung the coiled-up falls off the pins and cut the gripes adrift, Forbes and four others scrambled into her and, with wild eagerness, thrust the rowlocks into their sockets, slashed the oars adrift, and made ready to unhook and give way on the instant that she should touch the water. But of what avail was it all? Even while working with the others at the boat I never for an instant lost sight of the maniac swimmer. I noted the splash of his plunge into the water, and saw the white swirl raised by the startled sharks as he precipitated himself into their midst; I saw, too, the vigour with which he swam, and my ears tingled with the wild, horrible cry he uttered at every stroke. For a brief space, perhaps ten or fifteen seconds, not a solitary shark's fin was to be seen; the surface of the water was unbroken, save by the madman's long and eager strokes. Then, all round about him the golden sheen was darkened into blue and churned to hissing white by the simultaneous rush of that horde of sea-tigers, and, with a single faint, hoarse, bubbling cry, the swimmer was gone! "Too late! too late! hold on with the boat," I cried. "The poor wretch is gone; torn to pieces by the sharks! Now let us see if there is anybody else--faugh! What on earth is the meaning of this?" The exclamation was forced from me by an overpowering effluvium that at the moment swept on board us from the drifting boat, which was now on our weather-bow, and close aboard of us. As she dropped alongside, in the wake of the fore chains, all hands crowded to the rail to look down into her; while one smart fellow, with a rope's-end in his hand, was already over the side, clinging to a channel-iron, with one foot upon its bolt-head, ready to drop into her and make fast. But the odour that arose from the little craft and assailed our nostrils was so unendurable, and the sight that her interior revealed was so dreadful and revolting, that we recoiled as one man, and allowed the boat with her awful freight to scrape slowly along the ship's side from the fore chains to the taffrail, without an effort to secure her. To do so would indeed have been utterly useless, for that first glance down into her amply sufficed to assure us all that the forms lying prone there were dead and rotting corpses. They were those of two men, a lad of sixteen or seventeen, a woman, and a child of some eight or ten years old; the clothing of the two last mentioned being of so fine a texture and make as to suggest that the wearers must have been people of some consequence.