there
would be plenty of room; but a foot or two farther I had to crawl over a
case that came so close to a beam arching over from side to side of the
ship that I began wondering how my companion had passed in, and as soon
as I was through and into the wider space beyond, I stopped with my head
turned back to speak.

"You can't get through there, can you?" I asked.

"Well, it is pretty tight, sir, but I did it afore, and I've got to do
it again."

I listened to his efforts, and could make out that he was getting
through inch by inch, and he kept on commenting upon his progress the
while.

"Good job as one's bones give a bit, sir," he was saying, when the
knocking ahead came clearly, and seemed not so very far away. "Give 'em
an answer, sir; not too loud. Do it with your knuckles on something."

I was upon a case as he spoke, and I answered at once; but to my
annoyance this only drew forth fresh knockings in various ways--two
knocks together, then two more very quickly--a regular rat-rat--and then
all kinds of variations, to which I replied as well as I could, and then
left off in a pet.

"Who's going to keep on doing that?" I cried angrily. "They must
wait."

"Yes," growled Barney; "I'd go on, sir. That arn't doing nobody no
good."

The consequence was that I went forward slowly, with an accompaniment of
taps, which kept irritating me in that hot, stifling passage--no, it is
not fair to call such a place a passage, seeing that it was merely an
opening formed by the settling down of the packages, or their opening
out from the rolling of the ship in the storm.

I was passing along one of these latter portions with great care when a
cold chill ran through me, for the thought came--suppose the ship heels
over now, I shall be nipped in here and crushed to death.

But the ship did not heel over; though I did not feel comfortable till I
was out of the opening, and flat once more on the top of a huge crate,
between whose openings, the sharp ends of the straw used in packing it
projected and scratched my face. Here I paused to listen to Barney
panting and grunting as he struggled along.

"Mustn't make quite so much noise, sir," he whispered; "or some 'un
uppards 'll be hearing of us."

He was more careful, and I once more went crawling laboriously, and
finding on the whole so little room that I began to think I must have
gone much farther than Barney had been before. And there was a strange
thing connect