48 THE OCEAN 



been offered for such strange conditions, but 

 no acceptable theory, as to why such vessels 

 were suddenly deserted, has been forthcom- 

 ing, and they still remain among the most baf- 

 fling mysteries of the sea. 



Many derelicts float bottom-up and not a 

 few stories have been written in which men 

 were represented as living for days or weeks 

 within these capsized hulks. As these dere- 

 licts contain a large amount of air a man 

 undoubtedly could live for some time within 

 one of them, but there is no authentic instance 

 of the kind. One such derelict proved a 

 great surprise to the officers of the naval ves- 

 sel which destroyed it, however, for as the 

 first shell struck the hull and tore a great hole 

 in the planking, scores of living creatures 

 swarmed through the aperture. They were 

 cats; countless numbers of them; descendants 

 of the ship's cats which had been left on board 

 when the wreck was abandoned and which had 

 fed upon the rats in the hold and had increased 

 and multiplied in their floating prison. 



Almost as dangerous to navigation as the 

 derelicts are the floating masses of ice known 



