Partly out of curiosity and partly with a wish to hearten the men, I looked into the forecastle before going aft. There were sliding doors let into the entrance on either side the windlass, but one of them was kept half open to admit air, the fore-scuttle above being closed. The darkness here was made visible by an oil-lamp, in shape resembling a tin coffee-pot with a wick in the spout, which burnt black and smokily. The deck was up to my ankles in water, which gurgled over the pile of swabs that lay at the open entrance. It took my eye some moments to distinguish objects in the gloom, and then by degrees the strange interior was revealed. A number of hammocks were swung against the upper deck, and around the forecastle were two rows of bunks, one atop of the other. Here and there were sea-chests lashed to the deck, and these, with the huge windlass, a range of chain-cable, lengths of rope, odds and ends of pots and dishes, with here a pair of breeches hanging from a hammock, and there a row of oilskins swinging from a beam, pretty well made up all the furniture that met my eye. The whole of the crew were below. Some of the men lay smoking in their bunks, others in their hammocks with their boots over the edge; one was patching a coat, another greasing his boots, others were seated in a group talking, whilst under the lamp were a couple of men playing at cards upon a chest, three or four watching and holding on by the hammocks over their heads. A man, lying in his bunk with his face towards me, started up and sent his legs, encased in blanket trousers and brown woollen stockings, flying out. "Here's Mr. Royle, mates!" he called out. "Let's ask him the name of the port the captain means to touch at for proper food, for we aren't goin' to wait much longer." "Don't ask me any questions of that kind, my lads," I replied promptly, seeing a general movement of heads in the bunks and hammocks. "I'd give you proper victuals if I had the ordering of them; and I have spoken to Captain Coxon about you, and I am sure he will see this matter put to rights." I had difficulty in making my voice heard, for the striking of the seas against the ship's bows filled the place with an overwhelming volume of sound, and the hollow, deafening thunder was increased by the uproar of the ship's straining timbers. "Who the devil thinks," said a voice from a hammock, "that we're going to let ourselves be grinded as we was last night, without proper wittles to support us? I'd rather have signed articles for a coal-barge with drownded rats to eat from Gravesend to Whitstable, than shipped in this here cursed wessel, where the bread's just fit to make savages retch!"