A small breaker, with the bung out, and obviously empty, stood at the foot of the mast, with a tin dipper beside it; while the lower half of a sailor's sea boot, with the sole only of its fellow, lying in the stern-sheets, in company with a sailor's sheath-knife, told only too plainly of the terrible straits to which the poor creatures had been driven to quell the craving torments of hunger. The words "_La Belle Amelie_, Marseille," deeply carved in the transom, gave us the name and nationality of the ship to which this dreadful waif had once belonged, and completed the details of the entry which I that same evening made in my official log-book. The barque still having way upon her, the boat slowly scraped along our side until she reached our starboard quarter; and there--the halliard of the sail, which served also as a mast shroud, fouling our main-brace bumpkin--she hung, and refused to drag clear. Seeing this, and anxious to rid the ship of such hideous companionship, the mate whipped out his knife and, getting down upon the bumpkin, cut through the halliard, thus releasing the boat and, at the same time, letting the sail down by the run and sending the extremity of the yard crashing through her bottom. She now drifted clear; and, our mainyard being at the same time filled and the helm put hard up, we paid off and began to draw away from her, noting, meanwhile, that she was gradually filling with water. The sharks still stuck pertinaciously to her; and as she settled lower in the water it was horrible to see with what increasing eagerness and determination they crowded round and strove to overturn her. At length, when her gunwale was almost flush with the water's edge, they apparently succeeded; for we saw her mast begin to rock and sway, and then, while the blue of the water all about her with the surge of their struggling bodies was frothed into creamy white and spurting spray by their fierce plunges, the spar heeled suddenly over and disappeared. Happily we were by this time too far away to note the details in this final scene of the ghastly drama; but, taking a last look through the telescope, a few minutes later, I was able to make out the hull of the boat floating bottom up. The swarm of sharks had vanished. On the fifth day following, we arrived, without further incident, in the Canton river; and Sir Edgar and his party went ashore and took up their quarters in the best hotel in Hong Kong, while we went to work with all expedition to discharge our cargo. CHAPTER TWELVE. THE SOLUTION OF THE CRYPTOGRAM.