"It has drifted," said the mate, "since I was here before, and is now much nearer the surface--see, see!"--and presently the dead corpse, as if some sudden chemical decomposition had taken place, sent up a number of bubbles, and then rose rapidly to the surface with a bob (if in so serious a matter one may use such an expression), where it floated with the breast bone and face flush with the surface of the swell, dip dipping, and driving out small concentric circles, that sparkled in the sun all round. _The throat was cut from ear to ear_. "Great God," cried poor Hause, as he passed his arm round the neck of the dead body, and raised it out of the water--"my poor mate--my poor mate! Ay, ay--he would have the morning watch sure enough. A fearful watch has it been to him." We carried the body to the wharf, and left it there, covered with a boatsail, and once more proceeded to wait on the custos. The place we expected to meet him at was a sort of vendue store, the small open piazza of which, fronting the street, was lumbered with bales of Osnaburgs, open boxes of handkerchiefs, pieces of Irish linens, and several open barrels of mess beef, pork, pickled mackerel, herrings, and shads. We navigated through these shoals with some difficulty, and considerable danger to the integrity and purity of our coat skirts. At length we reached the interior. There was a passage fronting us, that ran right through the house from front to rear, on each side of which were sparred partitions of unpainted pine boards, covered with flour and weevils, and hung with saddlery, mule harness, cattle chains, hoes, and a vast variety of other miscellaneous articles of common use on an estate. Through the spars on the left hand side, I saw a person in a light-coloured jacket and trowsers, perched on the top of a tall mahogany tripod, at a small, dirty, hacked-and-hewn mahogany desk, with a pen behind his ear, his hands full of papers, and busy apparently with some accounts. But there seemed to be a dark _sanctum-sanctorum_ beyond him, of some kind or another, railed in separately, the partition festooned with dusty spider-webs, and raised several steps above the level of the floor. Here, in the obscurity, I could barely discern a little decrepit figure of a man, like a big parrot in a cage, dressed in a sort of dark-coloured night-gown and red night-cap. We all sat down unconcernedly to wait for his honour, as if this had been some common lounge, or a sort of public coffee-house,--some on tops of barrels, others on bales or boxes; but neither of the two persons at the desks moved or took the smallest notice of us, as if they had been accustomed to people constantly going and coming. "Where is your master?" said Twig at length to a negro that was tumbling goods about in the piazza. "Dere him is," quoth Snowball--"dere in de contin hose;" indicating the direction by sticking out his chin, both paws being occupied at the time in rolling a tierce of beef.