k--clothes for the night watch at sea or the
day ashore in the hotel verandah: and mingled among these, books, cigars,
bottles of scent, 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 food,
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 sickens me," I said; "let's go on deck and breathe."

The captain nodded. "It is kind of lonely, isn't it?" he said; "but I
can't go up till I get the code signals. I want to run up 'Got Left' or
something, just to brighten up this island home. Captain Trent hasn't
been here yet, but he'll drop in before long; and it'll cheer him up to
see a signal on the brig."

"Isn't there some official expression we could use?" I asked, vastly
taken by the fancy. "'Sold for the benefit of the underwriters: for
further particulars apply to J. Pinkerton,