About halfway down the street I spied a gateway standing ajar, and pull’d Delia aside, into a courtyard litter’d with barrels and timbers, and across it to a black empty barn of a place, where a flight of wooden steps glimmer’d, that led to an upper story. We climb’d these stairs at a run. “Faugh! What a vile smell!” The loft was pil’d high with great bales of wool, as I found by the touch, and their odor enough to satisfy an army. Nevertheless, I was groping about for a place to hide, when Delia touch’d me by the arm, and pointed. Looking, I descried in the gloom a tall quadrilateral of purple, not five steps away, with a speck of light shining near the top of it, and three dark streaks running down the middle, whereof one was much thicker than the rest. ’Twas an open doorway; the speck, a star fram’d within it; the broad streak, a ship’s mast reaching up; and the lesser ones two ends of a rope, working over a pulley above my head, and used for lowering the bales of wool on shipboard. Advancing, I stood on the sill and look’d down. On the black water, twenty feet below, lay a three-masted trader, close against the warehouse. My toes stuck out over her deck, almost. At first glance I could see no sign of life on board: but presently was aware of a dark figure leaning over the bulwarks, near the bows. He was quite motionless. His back was toward us, blotted against the black shadow; and the man engag’d only, it seem’d, in watching the bright splash of light flung by the ship’s lantern on the water beneath him. I resolv’d to throw myself on the mercy of this silent figure; and put out a hand to test the rope. One end of it was fix’d to a bale of wool that lay, as it had been lower’d, on the deck. Flinging myself on the other, I found it sink gently from the pulley, as the weight below moved slowly upward: and sinking with it, I held on till my feet touch’d the deck. Still the figure in the bows was motionless. I paid out my end of the rope softly, lowering back the bale of wool: and, as soon as it rested again on deck, signalled to Delia to let herself down. She did so. As she alighted, and stood beside me, our hands bungled. The rope slipp’d up quickly, letting down the bale with a run. We caught at the rope, and stopp’d it just in time: but the pulley above creak’d vociferously. I turn’d my head. The man in the bows had not mov’d. CHAPTER X. CAPTAIN POTTERY AND CAPTAIN SETTLE. “Now either I am mad or dreaming,” thought I: for that the fellow had not heard our noise was to me starkly incredible. I stepp’d along the deck toward him: not an inch did he budge. I touch’d him on the shoulder. He fac’d round with a quick start.