The case was there, as I was pretty certain that it would be, such provision rarely being absent from old-time vessels, but all the bottles had been taken from it except an empty one--which looked as though the cabin had been opened at the last moment to fetch out supplies for the boats, and then deliberately locked fast again with the poor woman inside: an act so barbarous that it did not seem possible unless a crew of out and out devils had been in charge of the ancient craft. However, the matter which just then most concerned me was the liquor that I was in search of, that I might a little stay my stomach with it against the hunger that was tormenting me; and so I ransacked the lockers that ran across the stern of the ship and across a part of the bulkhead forward, in the faint hope that I might come upon another supply--but my search was a vain one, two of the lockers having only some mouldy clothing in them, and all the rest being filled with arms. The stock of muskets and pistols and cutlasses was so large, so far beyond any honest traders needs, that I could not at all account for it: until the thought occurred to me that the vessel I had come aboard of had been a pirate--and that notion seemed to fit in pretty well with her crew having gone off and left the poor woman locked up in the cabin to starve. However, as I found out a little later, while my guess was a close one it still was wrong. The four bunks, two on each side, were not enclosed, and the only door opening from the cabin was in the bulkhead forward--and worth trying because it might lead to a store-room, I thought. It was a very stout-looking door, and across it, resting in strong iron catches, were two heavy wooden bars. These puzzled me a good deal, there being no sense in barring the outside of a store-room door in that fashion, since the door did not seem to be locked and anybody could lift the bars away. However, I got them out of their sockets without much difficulty; and after a good deal of tugging at a ring made fast in it I got the door open too--and instantly I was thrust back from the opening by an outpouring of the same vile heavy musty stench that had come up from the cabin when I staved in the hatch, only this was still ranker and more vile. And I found that the door did not lead into a little store-room, as I had fancied, but right through from the cabin to the ship's main-deck--that stretched away forward in a gloomy tunnel, as black as a cellar on a rainy night, into which I could see only for four or five yards. Indeed, but for the way that the ship chanced to be lying--with her stern toward the west, so that a good deal of light came in through the broken skylight from the ruddy sunset--I could not have seen into it at all.