“My meaning is plain enough, your Honour, which is, that little else than the handy way of master Harry in a boat could have kept the Bristol trader’s launch above water, the day we fell in with it.” “But in what manner was your own shipwreck connected with the safety of Mr Wilder?” demanded the governess, unable any longer to await the dilatory explanation of the prolix seaman. “In a very plain and natural fashion, my Lady, as you will say yourself, when you come to hear the pitiful part of my tale. Well, there were I and Guinea, rowing about in the ocean, on short allowance of all things but work, for two nights and a day, heading-in for the islands; for, though no great navigators, we could smell the land, and so we pulled away lustily, when you consider it was a race in which life was the wager, until we made, in the pride of the morning, as it might be here, at east-and-by-south a ship under bare poles; if a vessel can be called bare that had nothing better than the stumps of her three masts standing, and they without rope or rag to tell one her rig or nation. Howsomever, as there were three naked sticks left, I have always put her down for a full-rigged ship; and, when we got nigh enough to take a look at her hull, I made bold to say she was of English build.” “You boarded her,” observed the Rover. “A small task that, your Honour, since a starved dog was the whole crew she could muster to keep us off. It was a solemn sight when we got on her decks, and one that bears hard on my manhood,” continued Fid, with an air that grew more serious as he proceeded, “whenever I have occasion to overhaul the log-book of memory.” “You found her people suffering of want!” “We found a noble ship, as helpless as a halibut in a tub. There she lay, a craft of some four hundred tons, water-logged, and motionless as a church. It always gives me great reflection, sir, when I see a noble vessel brought to such a strait; for one may liken her to a man who has been docked of his fins, and who is getting to be good for little else than to be set upon a cat-head to look out for squalls.” “The ship was then deserted?” “Ay, the people had left her, sir, or had been washed away in the gust that had laid her over. I never could come at the truth of them particulars. The dog had been mischievous, I conclude, about the decks; and so he had been lashed to a timber head, the which saved his life, since, happily for him he found himself on the weather-side when the hull righted a little, after her spars gave way. Well, sir there was the dog, and not much else, as we could see, though we spent half a day in rummaging round, in order to pick up any small matter that might be useful; but then, as the entrance to the hold and cabin was full of water, why, we made no great affair of the salvage, after all.” “And then you left the wreck?”