I looked over the rail, watching the sickly-coloured side slipping sluggishly through the liquid transparent blue, marbled sometimes by veins and patches of foam, flung with a sullen indifference of energy from the hewing cutwater, on the top of which there projected a great beak, where yet lingered the remains of a figure-head that I had some time before made out to represent an Hercules, frowning down upon the sea with uplifted arms, as though in the act of smiting with a club. It was easy to guess that this ship had kept the seas for some months since careening by observing the shell-fish below the water-line, and the strings of black and green weed she lifted with every roll. But, uncouth as was the fabric, gaunt as her aged furniture made her decks appear, inconvenient and ugly as was her rig, exhibiting a hundred signs of the primitiveness in naval construction of the age to which she belonged, yet, when I lifted my eyes from the water to survey her, 'twas not without a sentiment of veneration beyond the power of the horror the supernaturalism of her and her crew raised in me to correct. For was it not by such ships as this that the great and opulent islands and continents of the world had been discovered and laid open as theatres for posterity to act dazzling parts in? Was it not with such ships as this that battles were fought, the courage, audacity, skill and fierce determination exhibited in which many latter conflicts may, indeed, parallel, but never in one single instance surpass? Was it not by such ships as this that the great Protector raised the name of Britain to such a height as exceeds all we read of in the history of ancient or modern nations? What braver admirals, more skilful soldiers, more valiant captains, stouter-hearted mariners, have flourished than those whose cannon flamed in thunder from the sides of such ships as this? Ay, 'twas a structure to dream in when the soul could let slip the dread which the thought of the Curse and the appearance of the crew inspired; a wizard to hearken back the imagination to olden times and show the sun sparkling, and the Heavens blue, and the sea azure in pictures, not more dead, and not less vital either, than the company who manned her, who were beings with loving hearts and blood-fed skins in that distant age into which she drove fancy, romancing and recreating.