ts of stray dunnage. "You tell me de
galley am right an' safe, for true, hey?"

"Why, there it is, you ugly varmint! Can't you see it for yourself?"
retorted the old seaman, rather nettled at having his word doubted.

"Lor' a mussy, dere it am!" ejaculated Cuffee, highly delighted when his
own eyes confirmed the fact. "Golly, Bosun, we can cook sumfin' now!"

"I don't know how you're going to manage that as it stands," said
Moggridge sarcastically. "Strikes me you'd better see about rigging it
up properly first!"

"I'se spec' you'll help, Massa Bosun," hinted the darky cook in an
obsequious way; "you clebber man, Massa Moggridge, an' knows how to
bowse tings up."

"Oh, yes; I don't want any of your blarney now, Cuffee. I fancy we're
all hungry enough to eat anything raw when we gets it, without botherin'
about cooking to-day at any rate!"

A grunt of assent came from all the hands standing by at this remark;
and I then turned round to see what Captain Miles and Jake were about in
the cabin. I had not yet entered that apartment, the finding of the
steward's dead body having scared me away. The pallid corpse looked so
ghastly and terrible!

As I turned to go to the after portion of the vessel I was almost afraid
that I should see the dead body of the steward again; but on reaching
the entrance to the cabin I noticed a tarpaulin covering it in the
corner, and I went hastily by, turning my face away, and bolting within
the swing doors.

Here, if the jumble of miscellaneous odds and ends under the break of
the forecastle had struck me as strange, the confusion was ever so much
worse; for, nothing having been washed out, the entire furniture of
every separate berth, as well as of the main saloon, were mixed together
in one indistinguishable mass--clothes, books, food and crockery-ware,
perishable and imperishable goods alike, all mingled in one inharmonious
whole.

Blankets, bedding, and pillows were piled on the chairs and benches that
had surrounded the centre table, which article, with its legs
upstanding, was jammed into the captain's own sanctum, half in and half
out, like the cow had been; while the fragments of plates and dishes,
coffee-pots and glass-ware of all description, were scattered on the
floor in every direction. Captain Miles's sextant and the tell-tale
compass, that used to hang from the middle of the ceiling of the deck
above, reposed peaceably together on the top of a double Gloucester