but I fell into some melancholy scruples, as I stood there, leaning
with one hand against the battered timbers. The homelessness of
men and even of inanimate vessels, cast away upon strange shores,
came strongly in upon my mind. To make a profit of such pitiful
misadventures seemed an unmanly and a sordid act; and I began to
think of my then quest as of something sacrilegious in its nature.
But when I remembered Mary, I took heart again. My uncle would
never consent to an imprudent marriage, nor would she, as I was
persuaded, wed without his full approval. It behoved me, then, to
be up and doing for my wife; and I thought with a laugh how long it
was since that great sea-castle, the ESPIRITO SANTO, had left her
bones in Sandag Bay, and how weak it would be to consider rights so
long extinguished and misfortunes so long forgotten in the process
of time.

I had my theory of where to seek for her remains. The set of the
current and the soundings both pointed to the east side of the bay
under the ledge of rocks. If she had been lost in Sandag Bay, and
if, after these centuries, any portion of her held together, it was
there that I should find it. The water deepens, as I have said,
with great rapidity, and even close along-side the rocks several
fathoms may be found. As I walked upon the edge I could see far
and wide over the sandy bottom of the bay; the sun shone clear and
green and steady in the deeps; the bay seemed rather like a great
transparent crystal, as one sees them in a lapidary's shop; there
was naught to show that it was water but an internal trembling, a
hovering within of sun-glints and netted shadows, and now and then
a faint lap and a dying bubble round the edge. The shadows of the
rocks lay out for some distance at their feet, so that my own
shadow, moving, pausing, and stooping on the top of that, reached