I had to return to the _Speranza_, get a half-inch rope, then back
to the other, for I would not be baulked in such a way, though now the
dark was come, only slightly tempered by a half-moon, and I getting
hungry, and from minute to minute more fiendishly ferocious. Finally, by
dint of throwing, I got the rope-loop round a mast-stump, drew myself
up, and made fast the boat, my left hand cut by some cursed shell: and
all for what? the imperiousness of a whim. The faint moonlight shewed an
ample tract of deck, invisible in most parts under rolled beds of putrid
seaweed, and no bodies, and nothing but a concave, large esplanade of
seaweed. She was a ship of probably 1,500 tons, three-masted, and a
sailer. I got aft (for I had on thick outer babooshes), and saw that
only four of the companion-steps remained; by a small leap, however, I
could descend into that desolation, where the stale sea-stench seemed
concentrated into a very essence of rankness. Here I experienced a
singular ghostly awe and timorousness, lest she should sink with me, or
something: but striking matches, I saw an ordinary cabin, with some
fungoids, skulls, bones and rags, but not one cohering skeleton.
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