s, odds
and ends of finery, and such trash as might be expected from the turning
out of several seamen's chests, upon a sudden emergency and after a
long cruise. It was strange in that dim cabin, quivering with the near
thunder of the breakers and pierced with the screaming of the fowls,
to turn over so many things that other men had coveted, and prized, and
worn on their warm bodies--frayed old underclothing, pyjamas of strange
design, duck suits in every stage of rustiness, oil skins, pilot coats,
bottles of scent, embroidered shirts, jackets of Ponjee silk--clothes
for the night watch at sea or the day ashore in the hotel verandah; and
mingled among these, books, cigars, fancy pipes, quantities of
tobacco, many keys, a rusty pistol, and a sprinkling of cheap
curiosities--Benares brass, Chinese jars and pictures, and bottles
of odd shells in cotton, each designed no doubt for somebody at
home--perhaps in Hull, of which Trent had been a native and his ship a
citizen.

Thence we turned our attention to the table, which stood spread, as if
for a meal, with stout ship's crockery and the remains of food--a pot of
marmalade, dregs of coffee in the mugs, unrecognisable remains of
foods, bread, some toast, and a tin of condensed milk. The table-cloth,
originally of a red colour, was stained a dark brown at the captain's
end, apparently with coffee; at the other end, it had been folded back,
and a pen and ink-pot stood on the bare table. Stools were here and
there about the table, irregularly placed, as though the meal had been
finished and the men smoking and chatting; and one of the stools lay on
the floor, broken.

"See! they were writing up the log," said Nares, pointing to the
ink-bottle. "Caught napping, as usual. I wonder if there ever was a
captain yet, that lost a ship with his log-book up to date? He generally
has about a month to fill up on a clean break, like Charles Dickens
and his serial novels.--What a regular, lime-juicer spread!" he added
contemptuously. "Marmalade--and toast for the old man! Nasty, slovenly
pigs!"

There was something in this criticism of the absent that jarred upon my
feelings. I had no love indeed for Captain Trent or any of his vanished
gang; but the desertion and decay of this once habitable cabin struck me
hard: the death of man's handiwork is melancholy like the death of man
himself; and I was impressed with an involuntary and irrational sense of
tragedy in my surroundings.

"This