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Imagine a room about 15 ft. long, 25 ft. wide the whole beam of the ship with about 7 ft. headroom. It has white enamelled sides and ceiling. A table, long enough to seat ten people at a pinch, runs athwartships, and ranged round it are various straight-backed chairs.
First satisfying himself that his guide was continuing upon his way unsuspecting, the other descended after him and continued his stealthy stalking. The passageway was now both narrow and low, giving but bare headroom to a tall man, and it was broken often by flights of steps leading always downward.
Then, by lashing our two longest stretchers together, we made a crutch for the head or after end of the mast to rest in; when, by placing this crutch upright in the stern-sheets against the back-board, we were able to raise the mast underneath the sails until it not only formed a sort of ridge-pole, converting the sails into a sloping roof, but it also strained the canvas as tight as a drum-head, rendering it so much the less liable to blow away, while it at the same time afforded a smooth surface for the water to pour off, and it also possessed the further advantage that it gave us a little more headroom underneath the canvas deck or roof.
There is six feet of headroom, and the deck is unbroken save for two companionways and a hatch for'ard. The fact that there is no house to break the strength of the deck will make us feel safer in case great seas thunder their tons of water down on board.
Ahead loomed the gaunt structure of the Sixth Avenue "L," bridging the roadway at so low an elevation as to afford the omnibus little more than clear headroom. Once beneath it a single bounce up from the surface-car tracks must mean a wreck. But the pursuit was less than half a block astern and gaining swiftly, even as the speed of the omnibus was growing less and desperately less.
But on top of the normal conditions came the fact that the last battalion to occupy those tents must have camped there in dry weather. Since there was not enough headroom upwards it had dug downwards.
'You see, she's a flat-bottomed boat, drawing very little water without the plate; that's why there's so little headroom. For deep water you lower the plate; so, in one way or another, you can go practically anywhere. I was not nautical enough to draw any very definite conclusions from this, but what I did draw were not promising.
For about two thirds of its length the furthest in two-thirds it was roofed with branches and some old torn sacking, covered by 6 or 8 inches of loose earth. This roof was level with the bank of the hedge and gave about four feet of headroom.
Then I recollected there wasn't five feet of headroom below, and that the place, even with the hatches off, was hot enough to boil water in. "They'll die down there, Sasa," I said. "No fear," said Sasa. "Rosalie is half Samoa, and as for Silver Tongue if he get roast like his own bread nobody care a banana." "But, Sasa " I protested.
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