their hands. They stooped over the blanket-swathed sleepers, working
quickly and cunningly with the ropes. They also bandaged the eyes and
mouths of the unconscious mariners with strips of blanket. By this time
the light on the stranded ship was burning low. The skipper and his
companions examined the four boats, dragged one of them down to the edge
of the tide and launched it. The fog was thinning swiftly, and a gray
pallor was spreading in the east and south. They manned the boat and
pulled out for the wreck, following the dripping hawser.

The wreck lay across a sunken rock, listed heavily to port. Her spars
were all over the side, a tangled mass washing and beating about in the
seas. A snag of rock had been driven clean through the timbers of the
port-bow. Black Dennis Nolan and his companions managed to get aboard at
last. A fire of rags and oil still burned in an iron tub on the main
deck. They went forward to the galley for a lamp, and with this entered
the cabins aft. Dennis Nolan led the way. The captain's room was empty.
They found and examined the quarters of the passengers. Clothing and
bedding were tossed about in disorder, and it seemed that everything of
value had been collected and carried away. They gathered up a couple of
silk gowns and a fur-lined cloak, however. The skipper was shaking out
the sheets from a berth when he felt something strike the toe of his
boot. He stooped quickly, recovered a small box bound in red leather,
and slipped it in his pocket. The others had observed nothing of this.
In another cabin, they found the passengers' heavy baggage packed in
about a dozen big leather boxes. They carried these to the main deck
without waiting to open them. By this time the dawn was an actual,
dreary-gray fact, and the fog was no more than a thin mist.

"Now for the cargo, lads," said the skipper.