The sailing ship Gertrude wheezes into the cove shortly after sunrise, and Bischoff cannot help but laugh. Barnacles have grown so thick around her hull that the hull itself (he supposes) could be removed entirely, and the shell of barnacles could be outfitted with a mast and canvas, and sailed to Tahiti. A hundred-yard-long skein of seaweed, rooted in those barnacles, trails behind her, making a long greasy disturbance in her wake. Her mast has evidently been snapped off at least once. It has been replaced by a rude jury-rigged thing, a tree trunk that has received some attention from a drawknife but still has bark adhering to it in places, and long dribbles of golden sap like wax trails on a candle, themselves streaked with sea salt. Her sails are nearly black with dirt and mildew, and rudely patched, here and there, with fat black stitches, like the flesh of Frankenstein’s monster.