I mused a bit, and then went in search of the carpenter's chest, which I found in the forecastle. It was a huge chest, cleated and lashed down against the bulk-head that divided the men's sea-parlour from the hold, and it lay in such gloom that I could make nothing of it, so I returned to the cabin for a lantern. I found a couple of bull's-eye lamps in the pantry. Whilst I filled and trimmed one of them, Miss Otway came from the stove to the door and stood looking in. 'Can't I help you?' said she. 'No,' said I. 'What are you going to do?' 'I am going to hoist a distress signal.' 'Is there anything in sight?' she shrieked. I shook my head. 'Why won't you let me help you?' said she. 'It's horrible to be left alone down here. Make me of use. It will do me good to help you.' But I would not allow her to come on deck merely to look on and be frozen to the marrow by the pouring wind; so, cheerily saying I'd find her employment by-and-by, I carried the lighted bull's-eye on deck and made my way to the forecastle, holding by the life-lines, so that I moved as briskly as if the hull lay quiet. I quickly found what I immediately wanted, namely, a quantity of long iron spikes. I took a handful of these and a hammer on deck and drove a spike deep into the wood, a little above the other; and thus I made a ladder of spikes, every projection of iron yielding me room for my foot and for a grip of one hand. When I had driven in the spikes as high as was needful, I came down, and after hunting over the gear upon the deck found a small block through which I rove a line that looked like a length of the fore-royal signal halliards. I climbed the mast again with this block and line and, driving a spike into the head of the stump, I secured the block to it and descended for good, this business being finished. I had taken notice of a flag locker under a grating abaft the wheel; I went to it and found a complete code of Marryatt's signals, a large and small ensign, and a jack. There was too much bunting in the big ensign for such weather as this, and for such winds as might burst upon us at any moment: so I bent on the small ensign to my halliards and ran it, jack downwards, to the head of the stump of foremast, where it flared bravely, chattering like a thing of life. Yet I found it but a mocking signal after all, when I sent my glance from it round the thick swollen and breaking seas, and noticed that even already the dye of the early night seemed in the air, and that in little more than an hour that streaming, flame-like appeal would, as a call to the eye, be as useless as the stump it blew from.