enormous cetacean. Suddenly a thought flashed into my mind.
“It is a ship!” I cried.
“Yes,” replied the Canadian, “an abandoned vessel which has sunk.”
He was right. It was a ship before us, the shrouds cut and hanging down as they had fallen. The hull appeared to be in good condition, and yet her wreck was not of yesterday. Three stumps, broken about two feet above the deck, indicated that her masts and rigging had been cut away. But she lay, full of water, heeling over to port. A sad spectacle, indeed, was this noble vessel beneath the waves; but a far sadder sight were the dead bodies, still held by the cords lying as they had been entangled. I counted four—four men, of whom one was still at the tiller—then a young woman, half hanging from the sky-light in the poop, holding a child in her arms. I could plainly see, by the light of the Nautilus, the features not already decomposed. In the supreme moment she had held the infant above her head, who—poor little thing!—was clasping its mother’s neck with its tiny arms. The attitude of the four sailors appeared terrible to me—tortured in their convulsive efforts to release themselves from the cordage that bound them helpless. Alone, more calm, with a quiet, grave face, his grey hair pressed down over his forehead, and with one shrivelled hand still grasping the tiller, the steersman appeared to be still guiding his shipwrecked vessel amidst the depths of the ocean.
What a spectacle! We sat dumb with beating hearts before this shipwreck, taken in the fact, as it were, and photographed at the last moment. And I could see
