She lay head to the reef, where the huge blue wall of the rollers was for ever ranging up and crumbling down; and to gain her starboard side, we must pass below the stern.

The rudder was hard aport, and we could read the legend: FLYING SCUD HULL On the other side, about the break of the poop, some half a fathom of rope ladder trailed over the rail, and by this we made our entrance.
She was a roomy ship inside, with a raised poop standing some three feet higher than the deck, and a small forward house, for the men's bunks and the galley, just abaft the foremast.

There was one boat on the house, and another and larger one, in beds on deck, on either hand of it.

She had been painted white, with tropical economy, outside and in; and we found, later on, that the stanchions of the rail, hoops of the scuttle but, etc., were picked out with green.

At that time, however, when we first stepped aboard, all was hidden under the droppings of innumerable sea-birds.
The birds themselves gyrated and screamed meanwhile among the rigging; and when we looked into the galley, their outrush drove us back.
Savage-looking fowl they were, savagely beaked, and some of the black ones great as eagles.