the
lazarette deck to the rudder-post--but I had seen enough; crawling about
that black interior was cold, lonesome, melancholy work, and it was
rendered peculiarly arduous by the obligation of caution imposed by my
having to bear a light amid a freight mainly formed of explosives and
combustible matter. I had found plenty of coal, and that sufficed. So I
returned by the same road I had entered, and sliding to the bulkhead
door to keep the cold of the forecastle out of the cook-room, I stirred
the fire into a blaze and sat down before it to rest and think.

CHAPTER XIV.

AN EXTRAORDINARY OCCURRENCE.

After the many great mercies which had been vouchsafed me, such as my
being the only one saved of all the crew of the _Laughing Mary_, my
deliverance from the dangers of an open boat, my meeting with this
schooner and discovering within her everything needful for the support
of life, I should have been guilty of the basest ingratitude had I
repined because there was no boat in the ship. Yet for all that I could
not but see it was a matter that concerned me very closely. Should the
vessel be crushed, what was to become of me? It was easy to propose to
myself the making of a raft or the like of such a fabric; but everything
was so hard frozen that, being single-handed, it was next to impossible
I should be able to put together such a contrivance as would be fit to
live in the smallest sea-way.

However, I was resolved not to make myself melancholy with these
considerations. The good fortune that had attended me so far might
accompany me to the end, and maybe I was the fitter just then to take a
hopeful view of my condition because of the cheerfulness awakened in me
by the noble show of coal in the forepeak. At twelve o'clock by the
watch in my pocket I got my dinner. I had a mind for a lighter drink
than brandy, and went to the lazarette and cut out a block of the wine
in the cask I had opened; I also knocked out the head of a tierce of
beef, designing a hearty regale for supper. You smile, perhaps, that I
should talk so much of my eating; but if on shore, amid the security of
existence there, it is the one great business of life, that is to say,
the one great business of life after love, what must it be to a poor
shipwrecked wretch like me, who had nothing else to think of but his
food?

Yet I could not help smiling when I considered how I was carrying my
drink about in my fingers. What the wine was I do not kn