As to how the barque had got so deep into the wreck-pack, she being so lately added to it, I could not determine; but my conjecture was that some storm had broken the pack and had driven her down into it, and then that the opening had closed again, leaving her fast a good way in its inside. But about the way of her getting there I did not much bother myself, my one strong thought being that I had a chance of finding on board of her something that I could eat; and so--being by that time pretty well satisfied that I was safe not to come upon anything horrid hid away in a dark corner of her--I went at my farther explorations with a will. Indeed, I was so desperately hungry by that time that even had I made some nasty discoveries I doubt if they would have held me back from my eager search for food. Luckily I had not far to look before I found what I was after, the very first door that I tried--a door in the forward side of the cabin--opening into a pantry in which were stowed what had been, as I judged from the nature of them and the place where I found them, the captain's private stores. The door was not locked, and a good many empty boxes were lying around on the floor with splintered lids, as though they had been smashed open in a hurry--which looked as though the pantry had been levied on suddenly to provision the boats after the wreck occurred, and so made me hope that the captain and his wife and baby had got away from the barque alive. But the stock of stores had been a big one, and I saw that I was safe enough against starvation if only a part of what was left still were sound--and that uncertainty I settled in no time by picking up a hatchet that was lying among the broken boxes and splitting open the first tin on which I laid my hands. The tin had beans in it, and when I cracked it open that way more than half of them went flying over the floor; and they looked so good, those blessed beans, that without stopping to smell at them critically, or otherwise to test their soundness, I fell to feeding myself out of the open tin with my hand--and never stopped until all that remained of them were in my inside. I don't suppose that they were the better for having lain there so long, but they certainly were not much the worse for it--as I proved more conclusively, having by that time taken off the sharp edge of my hunger, by eating a part of another tin of them and finding them very good indeed. After that I opened a tin of meat--but on the instant that the hatchet split into it there came bouncing out such a dreadful smell that I had to rush on deck in a hurry with it and heave it over the side.