Such a funny little voice, so strained and hoarse, like a cry at a great distance. Joshua himself was startled by it, moved, perhaps, by its distress. He persisted no further, but shrugged his shoulders, and turned to address us again. In the meanwhile we were approaching the wreck, which for some time now had been visible to us. It hung oddly in the mist--suspended, as it seemed, in the mid-haze of sky and water, like a wreck painted on glass. Still, seen through that illusive medium, it appeared a phantom, far-off thing, when to our surprise, grown absorbed as we were in contemplation of it, our boatman gave a final stroke, and finished on it with his sculls poised. “No further?” said I, rising all excitement now. “Can’t you take us any further, Mr. Rampick?” I’ll swear that not once during our approach had he turned his head to canvass our distance or direction. Old crafty smuggler as he was, he had hit his mark blindfold as it were. Even as I spoke, I was aware of something stretching its endless length across our course--a great soft, iridescent fish-shaped bulk, as it might be a vast submarine monster floating dead and motionless on the surface. It shone sleek and fawny, and pitted with little blue scales of water; and in the instant of my recognizing it, our boat had floated on, and, with the way given it, had grated its nose softly in its flank. Following the little shock and recoil, we were all on our feet. “The sands!” whispered Harry, with glistening eyes. “That was clever of you, Mr. Rampick.” We did not, he or I, demur to our enemy’s silence. It would have made no difference if we had. His regard, his consideration, were still all for our companion. Across the glimmering lifts of sand, the wreck, now we were brought stationary, seemed to draw nearer and clearer--a phantom still, yet claiming some foothold on this unreal reality of an amphibious little continent. Only a broken poop it was, tilted up and its mighty entrails spilt into the drift. Another storm, any rough weather, would scatter it for ever; yet no plundered town could have stood a symbol of more awful and pathetic desolation. The haze blurred and magnified it to us where we stood; so that, huge relic as it was in reality, it looked nothing less than gigantic. Gazing on it, its ruin and isolation in that mist of waters, I felt as one might feel in alighting on a fallen colossus in a desert. “Are we to land here?” said Joshua, breaking through the spell which had overtaken me. “Aye,” answered the smuggler, in that one terse, low monosyllable, and with his eyes never leaving the other’s face. “Go, you,” said Joshua, turning briskly to us two. “I will wait here, and take my turn when you’ve finished.” We hesitated, questioning him with a dumb glance. “Come!” he said. “The tide, as I reckon, don’t stand on ceremony.” “Why should we any of us go, Mr. Pilbrow?” I spoke up quickly. “We can see all we want to see from here.”