was not that she failed to ride the waves with even keel, it was
not that her rigging was in disarray, nor that her sails were
disordered. Her distance was too great to make out such details.
But in precisely the same manner as a trained physician glances at
a doomed patient, and from that indefinable look in the face of
him and the eyes of him pronounces the verdict "death," so
Kitchell took in the stranger with a single comprehensive glance,
and exclaimed:

"Wreck!"

"Yas, sah. I tink-um velly sick."

"Oh, go to 'll, or go below and fetch up my glass--hustle!"

The glass was brought. "Son," exclaimed Kitchell--"where is that
man with the brains? Son, come aloft here with me." The two
clambered up the ratlines to the crow's nest. Kitchell adjusted
the glass.

"She's a bark," he muttered, "iron built--about seven hundred
tons, I guess--in distress. There's her ensign upside down at the
mizz'nhead--looks like Norway--an' her distress signals on the
spanker gaff. Take a blink at her, son--what do you make her out?
Lord, she's ridin' high."

Wilbur took the glass, catching the stranger after several clumsy
attempts. She was, as Captain Kitchell had announced, a bark,
and, to judge by her flag, evidently Norwegian.