a disc of purple sea shot by the blood-red play of gleams; upon a disc
of water glittering and sinister. A high, clear flame, an immense and
lonely flame, ascended from the ocean, and from its summit the black
smoke poured continuously at the sky. She burned furiously, mournful
and imposing like a funeral pile kindled in the night, surrounded by
the sea, watched over by the stars. A magnificent death had come like
a grace, like a gift, like a reward to that old ship at the end of her
laborious days. The surrender of her weary ghost to the keeping of stars
and sea was stirring like the sight of a glorious triumph. The masts
fell just before daybreak, and for a moment there was a burst and
turmoil of sparks that seemed to fill with flying fire the night patient
and watchful, the vast night lying silent upon the sea. At daylight
she was only a charred shell, floating still under a cloud of smoke and
bearing a glowing mass of coal within.

"Then the oars were got out, and the boats forming in a line moved round
her remains as if in procession--the long-boat leading. As we pulled
across her stern a slim dart of fire shot out viciously at us, and
suddenly she went down, head first, in a great hiss of steam. The
unconsumed stern was the last to sink; but the paint had gone, had
cracked, had peeled off, and there were no letters, there was no word,
no stubborn device that was like her soul, to flash at the rising sun
her creed and her name.

"We made our way north. A breeze sprang up, and about noon all the boats
came together for the last time. I had no mast or sail in mine, but I
made a mast out of a spare oar and hoisted a boat-awning for a sail,
with a boat-hook for a yard. She was certainly over-masted, but I had
the satisfaction of knowing that with the wind aft I could beat the
other two. I had to wait for them. Then we all had a look at the