The dry-dock was built in compartments, to ensure it against sinking, but the ingenuity which was to keep it above water now served effectually to keep it down. Each one of these small water-tight compartments held the vessel fast to the bottom, as Gulliver was bound by innumerable threads to the ground of Lilliput. It was necessary to break severally into the lower side of each of these chambers, and allow the water to flow evenly in all. The interior of the hull was checkered by these boxes. Huge beams and cross-ties intersected each other at right angles, forming the frame for this honeycombed interior, pigeon-holed like a merchant's desk. It was necessary to tear off the skin and penetrate from one to the other in order to effect this. It was a difficult and tedious job under water. The net of intersecting beams lay so close together that the passage between was exceedingly narrow and compressed, barely admitting the diver's body. The pens, so framed by intersecting beams, were narrowed and straitened, embarrassing attempts at labor in them, which the cold, slippery, serpent-like touch of the sea-water was not likely to make pleasanter. It folded the shuddering body in its coils, and a most ancient and fish-like smell did not improve the situation. The toil was multiplied by the innumerable pigeon-holes, as if they fitted into one another like a Chinese puzzle, with the unlucky diver in the middle box. It was a nightmare of the sea, the furniture of a dream solidified in woody fibre.