herly?" exclaimed Sweers.
"I'll tell you what it is; it's these icebergs drifting in masses down
south into the Atlantic which cause the sudden spells of cold weather
you get in England during seasons when it ought to be hot."

As he said this he walked to the companion-hatch, the cover of which
was closed, and the door shut. The cover yielded to a thrust of his
hand. He then pulled open the doors and put his head in, and I heard
him spit.

"There's foul air here," said he; "but where a match will burn a man
can breathe, I've learnt."

He struck a match, and descended two or three steps of the ladder, and
then called out to me to follow. The air was not foul, but it was
close, and there was a dampish smell upon it, and it was charged with
a fishy odour like that of decaying spawn and dead marine vegetation.
Light fell through the companion-way, and a sort of blurred dimness
drained through the grimy skylight.

We thoroughly overhauled this interior, spending some time in looking
about us, for Sweers' fear of beholding something affrighting vanished
when he found himself in a plain ship's cabin, with nothing more
terrible to behold than the ship's furniture of a whaleman's
living-room of near half a century old. There were three
sleeping-berths, and these we explored, but met with nothing that in
any way hinted at the story of the ship. It was impossible to tell,
indeed, which had been the captain's cabin. All three berths were
filled alike with lockers, hammocks, wash-stands, and so forth; and
two of them were lighted by dirty little scuttles in the ship's side;
but the third lay athwartships, and all the light that it received
came from the cabin through its open door.

I don't know how long we were occupied in hunting these cabins for any
sort of papers which would enable Captain Funnel to make out the story
of the barque. We were too eager and curious and interested to heed
the passage of time. There were harpoons and muskets racked in the
state cabin, some wearing apparel in the berths, a few books on
nautical subjects, but without the owners' names in them, and there
was a bundle of what proved to be bear's skins stowed away in the
corner of the berth that was without a scuttle. A door led to a couple
of bulkheaded compartments in the fore part of the state cabin, and
Sweers was in the act of advancing to it when he cried out:

"By the tunder of heaven, what is dot?" losing his customary hold of
the English