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The idea of being shut up in here down under the water is more than I can stand. I’d rather take my chances going up to the surface and swimming about till I found a piece of the wreck, or something to float on.’ ‘You needn’t think of anything of that sort,’ said William, ‘for if we were to open a door or a window to get out, the water’d rush in and drive us back and fill up this place in no time; and then the whole concern would go to the bottom. And what would you do if you did get to the top of the water? It’s not likely you’d find anything there to get on, and if you did you wouldn’t live very long floating about with nothing to eat. No, sir,’ says he, ‘what we’ve got to do is to be content with the comforts we have around us, and something will turn up to get us out of this; you see if it don’t.’ There was no use talking against William Anderson, and I didn’t say any more about getting out. As for Sam, he spent his time at the windows of the state-rooms a-looking out. We could see a good way into the water–farther than you would think–and we sometimes saw fishes, especially porpoises, swimming about, most likely trying to find out what a ship was doing hanging bows down under the water. What troubled Sam was that a swordfish might come along and jab his sword through one of the windows. In that case it would be all up, or rather down, with us. Every now and then he’d sing out, ‘Here comes one!’ And then, just as I’d give a jump, he’d say, ‘No, it isn’t; it’s a porpoise.’ I thought from the first, and I think now, that it would have been a great deal better for us if that boy hadn’t been along. That night there was a good deal of motion to the ship, and she swung about and rose up and down more than she had done since we’d been left in her. ‘There must be a big sea running on top,’ said William Anderson, ‘and if we were up there we’d be tossed about dreadful. Now the motion down here is just as easy as a cradle; and, what’s more, we can’t be sunk very deep, for if we were there wouldn’t be any motion at all.’ About noon the next day we felt a sudden tremble and shake run through the whole ship, and far down under us we heard a rumbling and grinding that nearly scared me out of my wits. I first thought we’d struck bottom; but William he said that couldn’t be, for it was just as light in the cabin as it had been, and if we’d gone down it would have grown much darker, of course.

The rumbling stopped after a little while, and then it seemed to grow lighter instead of darker; and Sam, who was looking up at the stern windows over our heads, he sung out, ‘Sky!’ And, sure enough, we could see the blue sky, as clear as daylight, through those windows! And then the ship she turned herself on the slant, pretty much as she had been when her forward compartment first took in water, and we found ourselves standing on the cabin floor instead of the bulkhead. I was near one of the open state-rooms, and as I looked in there was the sunlight coming through the wet glass in the window, and more cheerful than anything I ever saw before in this world. William Anderson he just made one jump, and, unscrewing one of the state-room windows, he jerked it open. We had thought the air inside was good enough to last some time longer; but when that window was open and the fresh air came rushing in, it was a different sort of thing, I can tell you. William put his head out and looked up and down and all around. ‘She’s nearly all out of water,’ he shouted, ‘and we can open the cabin door!’ Then we all three rushed at those stairs, which were nearly right side up now, and we had the cabin doors open in no time. When we looked out we saw that the ship was truly floating pretty much as she had been when the captain and crew left her, though we all agreed that her deck didn’t slant as much forward as it did then. ‘Do you know what’s happened?’ sung out William Anderson, after he’d stood still for a minute to look around and think. ‘That bobbing up and down that the vessel got last night shook up and settled down the pig-iron inside of her, and the iron plates in the bow, that were smashed and loosened by the collision, have given way under the weight, and the whole cargo of pig-iron has burst through and gone to the bottom. Then, of course, up we came. Didn’t I tell you something would happen to make us all right?’

“Well, I won’t make this story any longer than I can help. The next day after that we were taken off by a sugar-ship bound north, and we were carried safe back to Ulford, where we found our captain and the crew, who had been picked up by a ship after they’d been three or four days in their boats. This ship had sailed our way to find us, which, of course, she couldn’t do, as at that time we were under water and out of sight.

“And now, sir,” said the brother-in-law of J. George Watts to the Shipwreck Clerk, “to which of your classes does this wreck of mine belong?”

“Gents,” said the Shipwreck Clerk, rising from his seat, “it’s four o’clock, and at that hour this office closes.”