asily be
carried away. The cabins opening into the little saloon had no doors,
save in the case of one--the captain's room--that had been split down
the centre, apparently with an axe, and its remains hung drunkenly now
upon one hinge, which, at a touch from Ted's hand, parted company with
its bulkhead, leaving the door to fall clattering to the deck. But,
curiously enough, the good hardwood bunks were all intact, except in
the case of one, which had, apparently, been wantonly smashed, perhaps
by the same insensate hand that smashed the door.

The saloon table had gone, of course, and the chairs; but the brass
cleats which had held them to their places in the deck were there
still to show us where our predecessors here had sat and taken their
meals. Here they had done their gossiping, no doubt, over the remains
of savoury macaroni, with, perchance, an occasional flagon of Chianti
or Barolo. There was a sort of buffet built into the forward bulkhead;
and by a most surprising chance this was unhurt, save for a great star
in the mirror behind it. Even its brass rail was intact. Some idle
boor must have observed this solid little piece of man's handiwork,
and then, I suppose, struck at the mirror with his axe--a savage and
blackguardly act. But here, at all events, was our little store
cupboard.

'Sideboard's all right then,' was Ted's grinning comment. 'And a man
could still see to shave in the glass.'

The saloon skylight had been removed bodily, perhaps to serve some
cockatoo bush farmer for a cucumber frame! And the result of this,
more than any other circumstance, had been to give the saloon its
desolate look; for, beneath the yawning aperture where once the
skylight had stood, there was now an unsavoury mound of bird's
droppings, near three feet high at its apex. This was now dust-dry;
but the autumnal rains of bygone seasons had streamed upon it no
doubt, with the result that all the rest of the saloon was several
inches deep in the same sort of covering. There were naturally no
stores in the pitch-black lazareet which one reached through a trap-door
in the saloon deck; but among the lumber there we found an old
bucket, a number of empty tins, packing-cases, and the like, a coal
shovel with a broken handle, and two tanks in which ship's biscuits
had been kept. How these latter commodities came to have been spared
by marauding visitors it would be hard to say; for, in the bush, every
one, without exception, requir