She lay helplessly canted to starboard, her head pointing up the creek.

Her timbers had started, her sides were coated with green weed; her rudder, wrenched from its pintle, lay hopelessly askew.

On her stern could still be read, in blistered paint, her name, "_The Seven Sisters_ of Troy." There she lay dismantled, with a tangle of useless rigging, not fit for saving, left to dangle from her bulwarks; and a quick fancy might liken her, as the tide left her, and the water in her hold gushed out through a dozen gaping seams, to some noble animal that had crept to this corner to bleed to death.
Mrs.Goodwyn-Sandys looked towards the wreck with curious interest.
"I should like to examine it more closely," she said.
For answer Sam pulled round the schooner, and let the boat drift under her overhanging side.
"You can climb aboard if you like," he said, as he shipped the sculls and, standing up, grasped the schooner's bulwarks.

"Stop, let me make the painter fast." He took up the rope, swung himself aboard, and looped it round the stump of a broken davit; then bent down and gave a hand to his companion.

She was agile, and the step was of no great height; but Sam had to take both her hands before she stood beside him, and ah! but his heart beat cruelly quick.
Once on board Mrs.Goodwyn-Sandys displayed the most eager inquisitiveness, almost endangering her beautiful neck as she peered down into the hole where the water lay, black and gloomy.