the Aleutians. Some of the crew froze. Others got ashore. Part of
survivors accounted for. Others not. Say they've turned native. Don't
know myself."

"The Aleutians!" exclaimed Billy Edwards. "Great Cats! What a drift! How
many thousand miles would that be?"

"Not as far as many another derelict has wandered in her time, son," said
Barnett.

The talk washed back and forth across the hulks of classic sea mysteries,
new and old; of the _City of Boston_, which went down with all
hands, leaving for record only a melancholy scrawl on a bit of board to
meet the wondering eyes of a fisherman on the far Cornish coast; of the
_Great Queensland_, which set out with five hundred and sixty-nine
souls aboard, bound by a route unknown to a tragic end; of the
_Naronic_, with her silent and empty lifeboats alone left, drifting
about the open sea, to hint at the story of her fate; of the
_Huronian_, which, ten years later, on the same day and date, and
hailing from the same port as the _Naronic_, went out into the void,
leaving no trace; of Newfoundland captains who sailed, roaring with
drink, under the arches of cathedral bergs, only to be prisoned, buried,
and embalmed in the one icy embrace; of craft assailed by the terrible
one-stroke lightning clouds of the Indian Ocean, found days after, stone
blind, with their crews madly hauling at useless sheets, while the
officers clawed the compass and shrieked; of burnings and piracies; of
pest ships and slave ships, and ships mad for want of water; of whelming
earthquake waves, and mysterious suctions, drawing irresistibly against
wind and steam power upon unknown currents; of stout hulks deserted in
panic although sound and seaworthy; and of others so swiftly dragged down