"
In a short time, details of the craft ahead, hitherto hidden by
distance, began to show. There was no sign of life aboard; her spars
were gone, with the exception of the foremast, broken at the hounds,
and she seemed to be of about a thousand tons burden, colored a mixed
brown and dingy gray, which, as they drew near, was shown as the action
of iron rust on black and lead-colored paint. Here and there were
outlines of painted ports. Under the stump of a shattered bowsprit
projected from between bluff bows a weather-worn figurehead,
representing the god of the sea. Above on the bows were wooden-stocked
anchors stowed inboard, and aft on the quarters were iron davits with
blocks intact--but no falls. In a few of the dead-eyes in the channels
could be seen frayed rope-yarns, rotten with age, and, with the stump
of the foremast, the wooden stocks of the anchors, and the teak-wood
rail, of a bleached gray color. On the round stern, as they pulled
under it, they spelled, in raised letters, flecked here and there with
discolored gilt, the name "Neptune, of London." Unkempt and forsaken,
she had come in from the mysterious sea to tell her story.
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