‘Hark!’ cried Miss Temple; ‘this ship is tolling his knell.’
The mellow chime floated past the ear. The effect was extraordinary, so clear was the note as it rang through the soft sounds of the weltering waters; so ghostly, wild, and unreal, too, the character it gathered from the presence of that silent, stirless penman.
‘I say, we’ve seen enough of him, I think,’ exclaimed Colledge.
‘Shall we bury him?’ said I.
‘Oh no, sir,’ exclaimed the lieutenant; ‘this sheer hulk is his coffin. Leave the dead to bury their dead. Now for a glimpse of the cabin.’
Miss Temple entered with some reluctance; the lieutenant handed her through the hatch down the short ladder, and Colledge and I followed. We found ourselves in a moderately-sized state-room of the width of the little vessel, with bulkheads at either end, each containing a couple of cabins. There was a small skylight overhead, all the glass of it shattered, but light enough fell through to enable us to see easily. Colledge had plucked up heart, and now bustled about somewhat manfully, opening the cabin doors, starting as if he saw horrible sights, cracking jokes as in the boat, and calling to Miss Temple to look here and look there, and so on.
‘Hallo!’ cried the lieutenant, putting his head into one of the cabins at the fore-end of the state-room; ‘I missed this room when I overhauled her. What have we here? A pantry is it, or a larder?’
I looked over his shoulder, and by the faint light sifting through the bull’s-eye in the deck, made out the contents of what was apparently a storeroom. There were several shelves containing crockery, cheeses, hams, and other articles of food. Under the lower shelf, heaped upon the deck, were stowed several dozens of bottles in straw.
‘The corsairs,’ said the lieutenant, ‘will always be memorable for the excellence of their tipple. What is this, now?’
He picked up a bottle, knocked off the head, and taking a little tin drinking-vessel from a shelf, half filled it, then smelled, and tasted.