John Gaythers Garden and the Stories Told Therein | Page 5

piece of
wreckage. I located the hole exactly, and I reported to the captain, who
was leaning over the side. Then I paddled around the brig to see if I
could find out what we were resting on.
"When I had sunk my water-glass well into the water, and had got my
head into the top of it, I looked down on a scene which seemed like
fairyland. The corals and water plants of different colors, and the white
glistening sand, and the fishes, big and little, red, yellow, pink, and blue,
swimming about among the branches just as if they had wings instead
of fins, that I told you of just now, were all there; and the light down
under the water seemed so clear and bright that I could see everything
under me that was as big as a pea."
"That must have been an entrancing vision!" said the Daughter of the
House.
"Indeed it was," replied John Gayther. "But, would you believe me,
miss? I didn't look at it for more than half a minute; for when I turned
my water-glass so that I could look under the brig, I could not give a
thought to anything else in the world except the astonishing objects our
brig was resting on.
"At first I could not believe my eyes. I paddled around and around, and
I put down my water-glass, and I stared and I stared, until I felt as if my

eyes were coming out of my head! At last I had to believe what I saw.
There was no use trying to think that my eyes had made a mistake. It
was all just as plain to me as you are now.
"Down in the water, resting on the bottom of this shallow part of the
sea, were two great ships--ships of the olden time, with enormously
high poops, which were the stern part of old-fashioned vessels, built
'way up high like a four-story house. These two antiquated vessels were
lying side by side and close together, with their tall poops reaching far
up toward the surface of the sea; and right on top of them, resting partly
on one ship and partly on the other, was our brig, just as firmly fixed as
if she had been on the stocks in a shipyard!
"The whole thing was so wonderful that it nearly took away my breath.
I got around to the stern of the brig, and then I stared down at the two
vessels under her until I forgot there was anything else in this whole
world than those two great old-fashioned ships and myself. The more I
looked the more certain I became that no such vessels had floated on
the top of the sea for at least two hundred years. From what I had read
about old-time ships, and from the pictures I had seen of them, I made
up my mind that one of those vessels was an old Spanish galleon; and
the other one looked to me very much as if it were an English-built
ship."
"And how did they ever happen to be wrecked there, side by side?"
almost gasped the young lady.
"Oh, they had been fighting," said John. "There could be no mistake
about that. They had been fighting each other to the death, and they had
gone down together, side by side. And there was our brig, two hundred
years afterwards, resting quietly on top of both of them.
"I was still wrapped up, body and soul, in this wonderful discovery,
when I heard a hail from the stern of the brig, and there was that
stock-broker, shouting to me to know what I was looking at. Of course
that put an end to my observations, and I paddled to the side and got on
board.

"'Lend me that box,' said the stock-broker, 'and let me get down on
your raft. What is it you've been looking at, and what did you see in
that box?'
"But he had got hold of the wrong man. 'No, sir,' said I. 'Find a box for
yourself, if you want one.' And I held mine so that he could not see that
the bottom of it was glass. Then the captain came along and told him
not to try to get down on that hatch, for if he did he would topple into
the water and get himself drowned, which would have been certain to
happen, for he could not swim. Then the hatch was hauled on deck, and
I went below with the captain to his cabin to tell him what I had seen.
The stock-broker tried awfully hard to come with us, but we wouldn't
let him.
"When the captain had heard all I had to tell him, he wasn't