ers of the kind that was formerly carried under the arm, women's
silk shoes, petticoats, pieces of lace, silk, and so forth; all directly
assuring me that what I viewed was the contents of passengers' luggage,
together with consignments and such freight as the pirates would seize
and divide, every man filling his chest. Perhaps there was less on the
whole than I supposed, the litter looking great by reason of everything
having been torn open and flung down loose.

I trod upon these heaps with little concern; they appealed to me only as
a provision for my fire should I be disappointed in my search for coal.
The hammocks obliged me to move with a stooped head; it was only
necessary to feel them with my hand--that is, to test their weight by
pushing them in the middle--to know if they were tenanted. Some were
heavier than the others, but all of them much lighter than they would
have been had they contained human bodies; and by this rapid method I
satisfied my mind that there were no dead men here as fully as if I had
looked into each separate hammock.

This discovery was exceedingly comforting, for, though I do not know
that I should have meddled with any frozen man had I found him in this
place, his being in the forecastle would have rendered me constantly
uneasy, and it must have come to my either closing this part of the ship
and shrinking from it as from a spectre-ridden gloom, or to my disposing
of the bodies by dragging them on deck--a dismal and hateful job. There
were no ports, but a hatch overhead. Wanting light--the candle making
the darkness but little more than visible--I fetched from the arms-room
a handspike that lay in a corner, and, mounting a chest, struck at the
hatch so heartily that the ice cracked all around it and the cover rose.
I pushed it off, and down rolled the sunshine in splendour.

Everything was plain now. In many places, glittering among the clothes,
were gold and silver coins, a few silver ornaments such as buckles, and
watches--things not missed by the pirates in the transport of their
flight. In kicking a coat aside I discovered a couple of silver
crucifixes bound together, and close by were a silver goblet and the
hilt of a sword broken short off for the sake of the metal it was of.
Nothing ruder than this interior is imaginable. The men must have been
mighty put to it for room. There was a window in the head, but the snow
veiled it. Maybe the rogues messed together aft, and only used t