nts of the vessel, though less striking in their
equipments than the upper cabin were arranged with great attention to
neatness and comfort. A few offices for the servants occupied the extreme
after-part of the ship, communicating by doors with the dining apartment
of the secondary officers; or, as it was called in technical language, the
"ward-room." On either side of this, again, were the state-rooms, an
imposing name, by which the dormitories of those who are entitled to the
honours of the quarter-deck are ever called. Forward of the ward-room,
came the apartments of the minor officers; and, immediately in front of
them, the corps of the individual who was called the General was lodged,
forming, by their discipline, a barrier between the more lawless seamen
and their superiors.

There was little departure, in this disposition of the accommodations,
from the ordinary arrangements of vessels of war of the same description
and force as the "Rover;" but Wilder had not failed to remark that the
bulkheads which separated the cabins from the birth-deck, or the part
occupied by the crew, were far stouter than common, and that a small
howitzer was at hand, to be used, as a physician might say, internally,
should occasion require. The doors were of extraordinary strength, and the
means of barricadoing them resembled more a preparation for battle, than
the usual securities against petty encroachments on private property.
Muskets, blunderbusses, pistols, sabres, half-pikes, &c., were fixed to
the beams and carlings, or were made to serve as ornaments against the
different bulkheads, in a profusion that plainly told they were there as
much for use as for show. In short, to the eye of a seaman, the whole
betrayed a state of things, in which the superiors felt that their whole
security, against the violence and insubordination of their inferiors,
depended on their influence and their ability to resist, united; and that
the former had not deemed it prudent to neglect any of the precautions
which might aid their comparatively less powerful physical force.

In the principal of the lower apartments, or the ward-room, the Rover
found his newly enlisted lieutenant apparently busy in studying the
regulations of the service in which he had just embarked. Approaching the
corner in which the latter had seated himself, the former said, in a
frank, encouraging, and even confidential manner,----

"I hope you find our laws sufficiently firm, Mr