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Sometimes I would see far stretches of mountain peaks, and sometimes the crowded streets of cities; but for the most part my visions were of the sea tall ships sailing, and little boats drifting over calm water in moonlight, and black steamers gliding quickly past me; and still more frequently, but always in a calm sea, the broken hulks of wrecked ships with shattered masts and tangled rigging and with dead men lying about their decks, and sometimes with a dead man hanging across the wheel and moving a little with the hulk's motion so that in a horrible sort of way he seemed to be half alive.
"As well try to wash some gutter-bred, French trollop, off the streets in behind there, into a white-souled, white-robed heavenly angel," he grumbled on. "All this purifying of the darned old hulk's so much labour lost. Gets the men's monkey up too, putting all this extray work on 'em." He leaned down again, folding his arms along the top of the bulwarks.
But owing to the hulk's high bulwarks and her great amount of "sheer," they could not fire directly into Jim's party, and the bullets plugged harmlessly into the boom about a yard behind the Chilians. Jim then ordered the men to place all their weight upon the spar, and this having been done, he clambered nimbly along it until he came to the torpedo.
The lower and topsail yards can be fitted on the hulk's decks, ready to be swayed into their places when the masts are in a state to receive them.
"And did you see him?" said Aunt M'riar, hoping to hear more, and taking much for granted that she did not understand, lest she should be the loser by interruption. "I saw him. I saw him. I did not know then that he saw me. They dared not row me near the wicked longboat that was under the hulk's side waiting waiting to take my heart away. They dared not for the officers.
The tide had covered the wreck, but the big rotary pump was running and, since the men had loosened the top of the cargo, it lifted the slimy stuff. A plume of steam that looked faint and diaphanous in the strong light blew away from the noisy machine. A large flexible pipe rose from the submerged hold and another ran from the pump across the hulk's deck.
All the same, he knew himself ridiculous. The extra water the pump lifted would not help much now. They had a few minutes, and then, if nobody cut the ropes, the hulk would go down. The massive oak mooring-post groaned and the deck-seams opened with the strain; the wire-ropes were rigid; one could see no hint of curve. The water touched the hulk's deck and began to creep up.
But they did not know, and some doubted. The ropes cracked and the hulk's list got sharp. On one side, her deck was very near the water. She was broad, but if Arcturus did not lift, it was obvious she must soon capsize. Lister opened the engine throttle until the valve-wheel would not turn. The cylinders shook, a gland blew steam, and the pump clashed and rocked.
As I entered the house I heard a voice say, "Yes, doctor, the old hulk's still afloat water-logged, but still afloat." Looking in the direction of the voice, I saw on a bed in one corner of the room an old beardless man. I had not a second's doubt that Dirk Peters of the 'Grampus, sailor, mutineer, explorer of the Antarctic Sea, patron and friend of A. Gordon Pym, was before me.
"Come along, nevey," interrupted Jack Pringle; "now you've found your way back, the first thing you ought to do, is to report yourself as having come aboard. Follow me, and I'll soon show yer the port where the old hulk's laid hisself up."
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