scanned the neighbor vessel eagerly. She was as motionless under the
cloudless blue dome of the sky as the ship on which he stood.

But she seemed to have men on board of her.

At least there were figures leaning against her rail.

The castaway lost no time in lowering the one boat that had not been
smashed and sliding down the "falls" into her. Then he sculled, not
without difficulty, through tangled weed to the side of the strange
vessel. But a strange sight met his eyes as he drew nearer. His
neighbor in the vast entangling expanse was a high-sided craft with
great ports, of which one or two had fallen away, revealing the
grinning muzzles of great guns. Her sails hung in torn fragments from
her square yards, and on her lofty poop the gilding had faded from
three big battle-lanterns and the carved scroll work surrounded her
name, El Buena Ventura. (The Fortunate Venture.)

But the men leaning over the side?

Alas for poor Bluewater Bill's hopes of human companionship.

It was many long years since they had been men, and it was a dozen or
more grinning skeletons in time-tattered garments that gazed over the
galleon's faded side at the lone castaway in his cockle-shell. How
they had died, the sailor, even after he had clambered on board, could
make no guess; but there they stood, a ghastly row of dead sailors,
held upright, as they had died, between the big gun-carriages of the
lost galleon's deck carronades.