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He listened, but he could not hear the sound of breathing. He rolled out of his bunk and investigated. The light in the camp was merely the reflection of the paler hue of the night outside, filtering through the open door and the single window. But he perceived that he was alone in the place the bunks were empty.
Within was still another room, for smokers, anything but like the fashionable place we had seen uptown. It was low, common, disgusting. The odour everywhere was offensive; everywhere was filth that should naturally breed disease. It was an inferno reeking with unwholesome sweat and still obscured with dense fumes of smoke. Three tiers of bunks of hardwood were built along the walls.
The cabin to which the woman led them was a large log hut of only one room, but with a number of bunks, built in two tiers, along the walls. At one end was an open hearth and chimney and arrangements for cooking. A long table and some rough-hewn benches were in the middle of the open space.
In "boarding round" I often found myself in one-room cabins, with bunks at the end and the sole partition a sheet or a blanket, behind which I slept with one or two of the children. It was the custom on these occasions for the man of the house to delicately retire to the barn while we women got to bed, and to disappear again in the morning while we dressed.
I had not even the usual equipments of a runaway the kerchief bundle and stick; I possessed absolutely nothing much less a mattress or hammock. Such things a skipper does not find for his crew, and of course there was none for me. I was not even allowed a "bunk" to sleep in, for the forecastle was crowded and most of the bunks carried double.
The dream of luxury was a low hut of two rooms. The outer one had a pile of fresh hay in one corner and a few blankets. Some of the dogs were already curled up there. The inner room contained two large bunks with hay and rugs and blankets; a bench ran where the bunks were not, around the sides; a shelf was above the bunks; there was a cupboard and a chest and a table.
Accordingly, besides the usual number of casks on deck, rows of immense tierces were lashed amid-ships, all along the between-decks, forming a sort of aisle on each side, furnishing access to four rows of bunks, three tiers, one above another, against the ship's sides; two tiers being placed over the tierces of water in the middle. These bunks were rapidly knocked together with coarse planks.
Then seem' as how he might expect to have company some time or other, look how he fixed the bunks along the walls." With that Obed turned a button that none of them had thus far noticed, fastened on the wall Immediately a section slipped down exposing a cavity beyond that proved to be a regular sleeping bunk, fully capable of "housing" any ordinary person.
The floor is bare, without carpet or matting, and around on the wall, wherever there is room for them, enormous hooks are screwed on. Over the doors are racks of netting. The bunks are plain wooden benches, covered with leather cushions stuffed with straw and packed as hard as tombstones by the weight of previous passengers.
The boat was upon the surface of the sea now, however, and a dim light penetrated below. The lieutenant's cabin, well forward, was fitted up luxuriously. There were several bunks in the little room, and the lieutenant motioned to them. "You will sleep there," he said quietly. "Make yourselves perfectly at home. I guess there is no danger of your attempting to escape.
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