"Belize seems to be the place she was going to when she left New Orleans," said Dick. "It appears, too, that she took on canned goods in addition to mill work in Boston, and that both were for British Honduras. We'd better go down in the hold and hunt for those canned goods."
Carl was immensely delighted with the proposition; anything that had a prospect of food at the end of it always made a hit with him. A lantern was secured in the captain's cabin, lighted with a match from the galley, and the boys stripped open a hatch and got into the 'tween decks.
Between the main and the lower deck there was a good deal of water, and barrel staves were floating in every direction. There were a number of boxes snugly stowed out of reach of the water, however, and Dick, by the aid of the lantern, discovered that some of the upper boxes were filled with canned pork and beans.
"Yah," chuckled Carl, clinging to the iron ladder that led down from the hatch, "I bed you dot come from Poston! Iss id der parrel staves, Tick, vat keeps der wreck afloat?"
"No," answered Dick, crawling over the cargo and pushing the lantern ahead of him, "there are not enough staves to do that, although, of course, they help—and so does the mill work. The cork, though, must be down in the lower hold, and that, I take it, is what buoys the ship up principally. Cork is a great—— Well, keelhaul me!"
Dick broke off his words with a startled exclamation.
"Vat's to pay now?" cried Carl.
"There's something here, matey, that's not down in the manifest."
"Vat id iss?"
"Boxes of ammunition and Krag-Jorgensen rifles."