Gone, gone--sixteen years of vanity and vexation. But from a
practical point of view, what is a worst calamity of all is that the
_Speranza_ now lies high-and-dry in the village: for she was bodily
picked up from the quay by the tidal wave, and driven bow-foremost into
a street not half her width, and there now lies, looking huge enough in
the little village, wedged for ever, smashed in at the nip like a frail
match-box, a most astonishing spectacle: her bows forty feet up the
street, ten feet above the ground at the stem, rudder resting on the
inner edge of the quay, foremast tilted forward, the other two masts all
right, and that bottom, which has passed through seas so far, buried in
every sort of green and brown seaweed, the old _Speranza_. Her steps
were there, and by a slight leap I could catch them underneath and go up
hand-over-hand, till I got foothold; this I did at ten the same night
when the sea-water had mostly drained back from the land, leaving
everything very swampy, however; she there with me, and soon following
me upon the ship.
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