"There bes somethin' wort' salvin' in there, ye kin lay to that!" said
one.

"The passengers' store-room, I bes a-t'inkin'," said another.

"Naught but the sail-locker," said a third. "D'ye look to find gold an'
dimins in every blessed corner o' every blessed ship?"

At that moment the skipper pulled the narrow door open to its full
extent. The water inside swirled out to fill the eddy made by the
opening of the door; and then, slow, terrible, wide-eyed, floating
breast-high in the flood, a woman drifted out of the narrow room into
the midst of the expectant men. Death had not been able to hide the
agony in her staring eyes, or dull the lines of horror in her waxen,
contorted face. She floated out to them, swaying and bowing, one hand
clutched and fixed in the torn bosom of her dress, a pendant of gold and
pearl swinging from each ear.

A groan of wordless horror went up from the wreckers. For a moment they
stared at the thing rocking and sidling in their midst, with grotesque
motions of life and the face and hands of a terrific death; and then, as
one man, they started to splash, beat and plunge their way to the
companion-steps. The water was set swirling by their frantic efforts, in
eddies and cross-currents which caught the dead woman and drew her,
pitching and turning heavily, in the wakes of the leaders and elbow to
elbow with some of the panic-stricken fellows in the second line of
retreat. They knew the thing was not a ghost; they knew the thing was
not alive, and could not harm them with its pitiful, stiff fingers; they
knew it for the body of a woman who had been drowned in her cabin--and
yet the horror of it chilled them, maddened them, melted their courage