“Wait a bit, my lad! Not so fast. Lie down again and tell me who she was.”
“Who she was?” I screamed. “I want to know where she is!”
“I can’t hardly say,” said the captain awkwardly. “We found the gig o’ the Lady Jermyn the week arter we found you, bein’ becalmed like; there wasn’t no lady aboard her, though.”
“Was there anybody?”
“Two dead ‘uns - an’ this here paper.”
“Let me see it!”
The skipper hesitated.
“Hadn’t you better wait a bit?”
“No, no; for Christ’s sake let me see the worst; do you think I can’t read it in your face?”
alone in sad and solitary grandeur, her flapping idle sails lighted up by the spreading conflagration, so that they were stamped very sharply upon the black add starry sky. But the whole scene from the long-boat was one of startling brilliancy and horror. The fire now filled the entire waist of the