There, stranded midway between the rocky boundaries on either side of the Sound--there, never again to rise on the living waters from her grave on the sunken rock; lost and lonely in the quiet night; high, and dark, and ghostly in the yellow moonshine, lay the Wrecked Ship.
"I know the vessel," said Allan, in great excitement. "I heard my workmen talking of her yesterday. She drifted in here, on a pitch-dark night, when they couldn't see the lights; a poor old worn-out merchantman, Midwinter, that the ship-brokers have bought to break up. Let's run in and have a look at her."Midwinter hesitated. All the old sympathies of his sea-life strongly inclined him to follow Allan's suggestion; but the wind was falling light, and he distrusted the broken water and the swirling currents of the channel ahead. "This is an ugly place to take a boat into when you know nothing about it," he said.
"Nonsense!" returned Allan. "It's as light as day, and we float in two feet of water."Before Midwinter could answer, the current caught the boat, and swept them onward through the channel straight toward the wreck.
"Lower the sail," said Midwinter, quietly, "and ship the oars. We are running down on her fast enough now, whether we like it or not."Both well accustomed to the use of the oar, they brought the course of the boat under sufficient control to keep her on the smoothest side of the channel--the side which was nearest to the Islet of the Calf. As they came swiftly up with the wreck, Midwinter resigned his oar to Allan; and, watching his opportunity, caught a hold with the boat-hook on the fore-chains of the vessel. The next moment they had the boat safely in hand, under the lee of the wreck.
The ship's ladder used by the workmen hung over the fore-chains.
Mounting it, with the boat's rope in his teeth, Midwinter secured one end , and lowered the other to Allan in the boat. "Make that fast," he said, "and wait till I see if it's all safe on board."With those words, he disappeared behind the bulwark.
"Wait?" repeated Allan, in the blankest astonishment at his friend's excessive caution. "What on earth does he mean? I'll be hanged if I wait. Where one of us goes, the other goes too!"He hitched the loose end of the rope round the forward thwart of the boat, and, swinging himself up the ladder, stood the next moment on the deck. "Anything very dreadful on board?" he inquired sarcastically, as he and his friend met.
Midwinter smiled. "Nothing whatever," he replied. "But I couldn't be sure that we were to have the whole ship to ourselves till Igot over the bulwark and looked about me."Allan took a turn on the deck, and surveyed the wreck critically from stem to stern.
"Not much of a vessel," he said; "the Frenchmen generally build better ships than this."Midwinter crossed the deck, and eyed Allan in a momentary silence.
"Frenchmen?" he repeated, after an interval. "Is this vessel French?""Yes."
"How do you know?"
"The men I have got at work on the yacht told me. They know all about her."Midwinter came a little nearer. His swarthy face began to look, to Allan's eyes, unaccountably pale in the moonlight.
"Did they mention what trade she was engaged in?""Yes; the timber trade."
As Allan gave that answer, Midwinter's lean brown hand clutched him fast by the shoulder, and Midwinter's teeth chattered in his head like the teeth of a man struck by a sudden chill.
"Did they tell you her name?" he asked, in a voice that dropped suddenly to a whisper.
"They did, I think. But it has slipped my memory.--Gently, old fellow; these long claws of yours are rather tight on my shoulder.""Was the name--?" He stopped, removed his hand, and dashed away the great drops that were gathering on his forehead. "Was the name _La Grace de Dieu?_""How the deuce did you come to know it? That's the name, sure enough. _La Grace de Dieu._"At one bound, Midwinter leaped on the bulwark of the wreck.
"The boat!" he cried, with a scream of horror that rang far and wide through the stillness of the night, and brought Allan instantly to his side.
The lower end of the carelessly hitched rope was loose on the water, and ahead, in the track of the moonlight, a small black object was floating out of view. The boat was adrift.