“I scrambled into this corpse of a ship over the lower side; then I reached the bridge and explored below. The daylight, coming in through the shattered hatches and the rents in the sides, flooded the long, sombre, cave-like spaces, full of smashed woodwork, with a dim light. There was nothing left inside her but the sand that formed the flooring of this wooden-walled underworld.
“I began to make notes on the state of the vessel. I sat down on an empty broken barrel, and I wrote by the light of a large porthole through which I could see the boundless stretch of shore. Every now and again, I felt my skin contract with a strange shudder of cold and loneliness; and sometimes I stopped writing to listen to the vague mysterious sounds of the wreck: the sound of crabs scratching at the bulwarks with their hooked claws, the sound of a thousand small sea-creatures already at work on the body of this death, and the gentle regular sound of the teredo worm ceaselessly gnawing, like the grinding of a gimlet, in every part of the old timers, eating out their insides and devouring them all together.
“Suddenly I heard human voices quite near me. I leaped up as if I had seen a ghost. For a brief moment I verily thought I was going to see two drowned men rising from the bottom of this sinister shell to tell me the manner of their death. You may be sure it did not take me long to climb in all haste to the bridge, and I saw standing beside the ship a tall gentleman with three young girls, or rather a tall Englishman with three little English girls. They were certainly far more frightened than I had been when they saw a man rush violently up from the depths of the deserted three-master. The youngest of the little girls ran away; the two others clutched their father with both arms; as for him, his mouth opened; he gave no other sign of surprise.
“Then, after a brief pause, he spoke:
“ ‘Are you the owner of this vessel, sir?’
“ ‘Yes, sir.’
“ ‘Can I look over her?’
“ ‘Yes, sir.’
“He then delivered himself of a long sentence in English, of which I could distinguish only the one word ‘gracious,’ recurring several times.
“He looked round for a place to climb on board and I pointed him out the best place and offered him a hand. He got up; then we helped up the three little girls, now recovered from their fright. They were charming, especially the eldest, a fair-haired girl of eighteen, fresh as a flower, and so dainty, so adorably slender. Upon my word, a pretty English girl is like nothing so much as a frail sea flower. This one might just have sprung from the sand, and kept its gold in her hair. The exquisite freshness of these English girls makes one think of the faintly lovely colours of rosy shells, of mother of pearl, rare and mysterious, hidden in the fathomless depths of the seas.
“She spoke French a little better than the father, and interpreted between us. I had to tell the story of the wrecking in all its details, which I extemporised as if I had been present at the disaster. Then the whole family descended into the interior of the wreck. Little cries of astonishment broke from them as soon as they entered this dim shadowy gallery; and in a moment father and all three daughters were displaying sketching-books which they had doubtless had concealed in their bulky waterproofs, and they all set themselves forthwith to make four pencil sketches of this strange and gloomy place.
“They sat side by side on a jutting beam, and the four sketching-books supported on eight knees were covered with little black lines which evidently represented the gaping belly of the Marie-Joseph.
“The eldest girl talked to me as she worked, and I continued my inspection of the skeleton of the ship.
“I learned that they were spending the winter at Biarritz and that they had come to the island of Ré on purpose to look at this foundered three-master. These people had none of the English insolence; they were just jolly, kindhearted idiots, born wanderers such as England sends out over the whole world. The father, lank, lean, his red face encased in drooping white whiskers, for all the world like an animated sandwich, a slice of ham in the shape of a human head, between two little hair cushions; the daughters, long-legged, like half-grown storks, as lean as their father, except the eldest, and all three of the girls charming, but especially the eldest.
“She had such a quaint way of speaking, of describing things, of understanding and failing to understand, of lifting to question me eyes as blue as the deep sea, of stopping the sketch to study the scene of her efforts, of setting to work again, and of saying ‘Yes’ or ‘No,’ that time went unheeded while I stood there watching and listening to her.
“Suddenly she murmured:
“ ‘I hear something moving lightly on this boat.’
“I listened carefully, and at once I heard a faint sound, a strange regular sound. What was it? I got up and went to look out of the porthole, and a wild shout broke from me. The sea had come up with us; it was on the point of surrounding us.
“We rushed to the
