"Oh! Signor Phips. Oh, Signor Capitan Commandante. The shippy all down
there. Fust ting the chest knock on cannon sticking up in water, then
against her sidy, then I bery much frighted, for I see dead man's head
looking at me out of hole. Oh! Capitan Commandante, the shippy there,
and she full of dead men. Oh! capitan, send Massa Woods down to see if
I speak truf."
So you see we had found the ship
"And," says Phips, that night, as we drank together, "it is my
thirty-seventh year!"
CHAPTER XV.
WHAT THE FIRST SEARCH REVEALED.
Now, therefore, have I to write down of all that, having found the
ship, we found in her. Yet how shall I begin?
Firstly, let me describe how it was with the carrack herself.
She lay canted right over on to her larboard side, the whole of her
larboard forepart broke away and stove in, and crushed as would be an
egg beaten in with a hammer. And in the fifty years--if it were so
long--in which she had been there she seemed to have grown so much to
the reef, or the reef to her, that they seemed part and parcel of one
another. She must, we could see at once, have struck full head on, and
the wicked teeth of the rock had torn her forepart to pieces. Whether
at once she heeled over and sank was never to be known now, or whether
she filled and sank after a while. Perhaps 'twas the latter, since,
otherwise, it was not to be understood how those sailors whom Geronimo
had known and danced with, and sang with, could, had she turned over
in a sudden shock, have ever collected together the plate they had,
and have gotten away in the open boat.
Aft, from the beginning of her waist above, she was not broken into at
all, being quite sound Od her starboard side as she lay, though, as we
found, her larboard side aft, which lay on the bottom, had rotted
somewhat and bulged away, so that what was in her on that side was,
indeed, lying on the sea's bed. Her masts and yards were all broke off
short, and the broken pieces, into which the limestone had not wedged
itself and so held them down, had doubtless risen and floated. And
this must have been the case with the stern-rail which the old
Portuguese had seen, though why that went adrift we never rightly
understood, since no other part of the stern was gone. We found all
this out later on, as you shall see, when we determined what we must
do; but now Phips and I went apart to hold a conference, the first
thing he said being,
"Nick, we have found the plate ship, therefore is one, nay, the
greatest, of our difficulties over. But with this begins the necessity
for great caution. For, see you, Nick, we cannot trust the overhauling
of this ship to the two divers alone. We must know all that is in her,
and we must see that all comes safe up and into our hands. What,
therefore, shall be done?"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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