he forecastle-head. As a result, even through my mittens, I was cut by
the sharp edges of broken shell.

"It's liquor of some sort," said the mate, "but we won't risk broaching
it till morning."

"But where did it come from?" I asked.

"Over the side's the only place it could have come from." Mr. Pike
played the light over it. "Look at it! It's been afloat for years and
years."

"The stuff ought to be well-seasoned," commented Mr. Mellaire.

Leaving them to lash the cask securely, I stole along the deck to the
forecastle and peered in. The men, in their headlong flight, had
neglected to close the doors, and the place was afloat. In the
flickering light from a small and very smoky sea-lamp it was a dismal
picture. No self-respecting cave-man, I am sure, would have lived in
such a hole.

Even as I looked a bursting sea filled the runway between the house and
rail, and through the doorway in which I stood the freezing water rushed
waist-deep. I had to hold on to escape being swept inside the room. From
a top bunk, lying on his side, Andy Fay regarded me steadily with his
bitter blue eyes. Seated on the rough table of heavy planks, his sea-
booted feet swinging in the water, Mulligan Jacobs pulled at his pipe.
When he observed me he pointed to pulpy book-pages that floated about.

"Me library's gone to hell," he mourned as he indicated the flotsam.
"There's me Byron. An' there goes Zola an' Browning with a piece of
Shakespeare runnin' neck an' neck, an' what's left of _Anti-Christ_
makin' a bad last. An' there's Carlyle and Zola that cheek by jowl you
can't tell 'em apart."

Here the _Elsinore_ lay down to starboard, and the water in the
forecastle poured out against my legs and hips. My wet mittens slipped
on the iron work, and I swept down the runway into the scuppers, where I
was turned over and over by another flood that had just boarded from
windward.

I know I was rather confused, and that I had swallowed quite a deal of
salt water, ere I got my hands on the rungs of the ladder and climbed to
the top of the house. On my way aft along the bridge I encountered the
crew coming for'ard. Mr. Mellaire and Mr. Pike were talking in the lee
of the chart-house, and inside, as I passed below, Captain West was
smoking a cigar.

After a good rub down, in dry pyjamas, I was scarcely back in my bunk
with the _Mind of Primitive Man_ before me, when the stampede over my
head was repeated. I waited for the