rolling heavily, her boats gone, her decks swept, had she wearied
her men half to death with the unceasing labour at the pumps before
she sank with them like a stone?

However, such a case must be rare. I imagine a raft of some sort
could always be contrived; and, even if it saved no one, it would
float on and be picked up, perhaps conveying some hint of the
vanished name. Then that ship would not be, properly speaking,
missing. She would be "lost with all hands," and in that
distinction there is a subtle difference--less horror and a less
appalling darkness.



XVII.



The unholy fascination of dread dwells in the thought of the last
moments of a ship reported as "missing" in the columns of the
Shipping Gazette. Nothing of her ever comes to light--no grating,
no lifebuoy, no piece of boat or branded oar--to give a hint of the
place and date of her sudden end. The Shipping Gazette does not
even call her "lost with all hands." She remains simply "missing";
she has disappeared enigmatically into a mystery of fate as big as
the world, where your imagination of a brother-sailor, of a fellow-
servant and lover of ships, may range unchecked.

And yet sometimes one gets a hint of what the last scene may be
like in the life of a ship and her crew, which resembles a drama in