I was, however, determined to save the men, if it could be done; we therefore steered the barque as close up under the lee of the wreck as we dared, and backed our mainyard, with the brig's royal-mastheads showing just awash not ten feet to windward of us. It was an extraordinary and appalling picture that we now looked upon. The vessel--a brig of about one hundred and eighty tons--had been thrown over on her starboard side, and now lay submerged to about halfway up her hatchways, with her masts prone along the water, into and out of which they dipped and rose two or three feet with the wash of the sea and the roll of the hull. She was a wooden vessel, apparently American built, and was under whole topsails, foresail, spanker, and jib, which sufficiently accounted for her present predicament if, as seemed probable, she had been caught under that canvas in the outburst of the previous day. She had no quarter davits, and the chocks over the main hatchway--where the long-boat, and sometimes the jolly-boat as well, is usually stowed--were missing; but the gripes were still there, showing that the boat or boats that had been stowed there had evidently been washed away. There was, moreover, the remains of what had once been a gig on her gallows. She appeared to have been generously fitted up; for, as she rose and fell, we caught the flash of brass work about her skylight and companion, and when her stern lifted high enough out of the water a handsome brass binnacle, securely bolted to the deck, became exposed to our view. Lastly, huddled in her weather main rigging, about twelve or fifteen feet from the rail--where they were tolerably clear of the seas that constantly broke over the vessel's upturned side--was a group of nine men, most of them bareheaded, clad in garments that clung to their bodies with the tenacity of clothing that has been soaked for many consecutive hours in water. They were in a miserable and most precarious plight, indeed; and I could not help wondering how they had possibly managed to cling for so many hours to so insecure a refuge--assuming, of course, that the brig had capsized on the previous afternoon, as I surmised. The first thing was to communicate with them; and this I first attempted by means of the speaking trumpet. But the roar of the wind and the wash of the sea, together with our drift--which was, of course, much more rapid than that of the wreck--rendered my voice inaudible; so it became necessary to resort to other methods. There happened to be a "bull-board" kicking about the poop; and setting this up on the skylight, where it could be distinctly seen, with its black face towards the wreck, I got a piece of chalk, and hastily wrote upon it the following words, one after the other, receiving a wave of the hand from those on the wreck in token that they had deciphered each word before I obliterated it and wrote the next:--