k-house.
I turned the lanthorn about, and discovered every convenience for
dressing food. The furnaces were of brick and the oven was a great
one--great, I mean, for the size of the vessel. There were pots, pans,
and kettles in plenty, a dresser with drawers, dishes of tin and
earthenware, a Dutch clock--in short, such an equipment of kitchen
furniture as you would not expect to find in the galley of an Indiaman
built to carry two or three hundred passengers. About half a chaldron of
small coal lay heaped in a wooden angular fence fitted to the ship's
side, for the sight of which I thanked God. I held the lanthorn to the
furnace, and observed a crooked chimney rising to the deck and passing
through it. The mouth or head of it was no doubt covered by the snow,
for I had not noticed any such object in the survey I had taken of the
vessel above. Strange, I thought, that these men should have frozen to
death with the material in the ship for keeping a fire going. But then
my whole discovery I regarded as one of those secrets of the deep which
defy the utmost imagination and experience of man to explain them.
Enough that here was a schooner which had been interred in a sepulchre
of ice, as I might rationally conclude, for near half a century, that
there were dead men in her who looked to have been frozen to death, that
she was apparently stored with miscellaneous booty, that she was
powerfully armed for a craft of her size, and had manifestly gone
crowded with men. All this was plain, and I say it was enough for me. If
she had papers they were to be met with presently; otherwise, conjecture
would be mere imbecility in the face of those white and frost-bound
countenances and iron silent lips.

I thrust back another sliding door and entered the ship's forecastle.
The ceiling, as I choose to call the upper deck, was lined with
hammocks, and the floor was covered with chests, bedding, clothes, and I
know not what else. The ringing of the wind on high did not disturb the
stillness, and I cannot convey the impression produced on my mind by
this extraordinary scene of confusion beheld amid the silence of that
tomblike interior. I stood in the doorway, not having the courage to
venture further. For all I knew many of those hammocks might be
tenanted; for as this kind of bed expresses by its curvature the rounded
shape of a seaman, whether it be empty or not, so it is impossible by
merely looking to know whether it is occupied or vac