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During that afternoon we saw bits of wreckage, the remains probably of some unfortunate vessel that had failed to weather the strong gales south of Cape Horn. The weather conditions did not improve, and on the fifth day out the gale was so fierce that we were compelled to take in the double-reefed mainsail and hoist our small jib instead.
The others, the leaders' immediate supporters, were men of fiery youth, or those whose work it was to wreck at all costs, and snatch to themselves, in addition to pay for their fell work, such loot as the wreckage afforded them. The hum of talk snuffed right out as the leader rose to address the meeting.
And so the editors of divers papers were the victims of a decorous anguish, court-mourning was decreed, and that wreckage which passed for the mutilated body of Prince Hilary was buried with every appropriate honor. Within the week most people had forgotten him, for everybody was discussing the execution of the Duc d'Enghein.
The nearest edge of this mass of wreckage was not a quarter of a mile off from me; but it swept away in a great irregular curve to the right and left and vanished into the golden haze softly and straight ahead I could see it stretching dimly away from me, getting thicker and closer until it seemed to be almost as solid as a real island would have been.
Even at a distance, a sailor's eye could read other signs that marked this ship as the Revenge. "The devil looks after his own," angrily exclaimed Joe. "I'd ha' wagered my last ducat that she was whirled away to founder. Blackbeard boasts of his compact with Satan. I believe it's true." "Shall we pull down our mast and pray that he passes the raft as a piece of wreckage?" implored Jack.
She was heavily laden with the brig's crew of limp and shivering Danish seamen. And it was not a moment too soon for her to be ashore: the brig parted almost directly, and the wreckage was strewn all along the beach. The men who did this action never had any reward. And it did not matter; for they took a very moderate view of their own merits.
Much of our old civilization, with its veneer of politeness and its heart of barbarism, will have been riven as the ranges were riven by the earthquake. But out of the wreckage shall come the healthier day. The wounds will heal as they always heal, and the scars will stay as they always stay; but they will stay to warn us against perpetuating our ancient follies.
It is easy to see how the worthless element from our villages, the loafer, the shiftless, the drunkard, the criminal, naturally gravitates towards its proper place as part of the "social wreckage" of our cities. But the size of this element must not be exaggerated. It forms a comparatively small fraction of the whole.
It had often been observed that drift-wood and wreckage seemed, in many places, to float towards the Pole. Trees that fall in the Siberian forests and float down the great rivers to the northern sea are frequently found washed up on the shores of Greenland, having apparently passed over the Pole itself.
Captain Whalley picked himself up and stood knee-deep in wreckage, torn, bleeding, knowing the nature of the danger he had escaped mostly by the sound, and holding Mr. Massy's coat in his arms.
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