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This was his first impression; but the sound was not repeated, and in a moment or two he fancied he must have been dreaming of the salute he had heard in the lazarette of the Good Intent, as the squadron sailed out of Harwich. The boat was still moving with unabated speed, and the dark, choppy water stretched all round them.

He directed us to observe how high she was standing out of the water, and expressed the opinion that for that reason it might be possible for us to penetrate to her lazarette, where we should doubtless find a quantity of tinned stuff that would be infinitely more palatable than the fruit diet upon which we had so long been subsisting, and of which we were all now thoroughly tired; and he was particularly eloquent upon the subject of drink, of which he seemed confident that we should find a considerable quantity.

I was moving towards the forecastle. "Not that way for the run," cried he. "Is there a hatch aft?" I asked. "Certainly; in the lazarette." "I wish I had known that," said I; "I should have been spared a stifling scramble over the casks and raffle forwards." He led the way, and coming to the trap hatch that conducted to the lazarette, he pulled it open and we descended.

It took us but a few minutes to penetrate to the little vessel's lazarette, where we found an ample supply of provisions of all kinds for a much larger crew than ourselves and a much longer voyage than we contemplated.

On clearing away the clothes I perceived a ring similar to that in the lazarette hatch, and it rose to my first drag and left me the hold yawning black below. I peered down and observed a stout stanchion traversed by iron pins for the hands and feet. The atmosphere was nasty, and to give it time to clear I went to the cook-house and warmed myself before the fire.

On entering the passage in which were the doors of the berths, I noticed an object that had before escaped my observation I mean a small trap-hatch, no bigger than a manhole, with a ring for lifting it, midway down the lane. I suspected this to be the entrance to the lazarette, and putting both hands to the ring pulled the hatch up.

Dodd," she cried, "to go in that tiny thing so far upon the ocean!" And I perceived I had risen in the lady's estimation. The "dear little ship" presented a horrid picture of confusion, and its occupants of weariness and ill-humour. From the cabin the cook was storing tins into the lazarette, and the four hands, sweaty and sullen, were passing them from one to another from the waist.

Looking about him Gaunt had no difficulty in discovering the locality of the hatch leading down to the lazarette, which, like the rest of the cabin flooring, was covered with oilcloth, on folding back which he noticed, with satisfaction, that the sea had been prevented from penetrating into the interior.

Next, aided by anxious sailors, he and Daughtry dropped into the lazarette through the cabin floor, and began breaking out and passing up a stream of supplies cases of salmon and beef, of marmalade and biscuit, of butter and preserved milk, and of all sorts of the tinned, desiccated, evaporated, and condensed stuff that of modern times goes down to the sea in ships for the nourishment of men.

"Perhaps he asks you sometimes what a smoke-pipe is hollow for, don't he? I never seen such a funny man. But he'll never get over it, I want to know." "Is it really hollow?" asked Jennie of the old mate. "Yessum, it certainly is. Why, it's the smoke-pipe, you know," was the reply. "We have an engine in the lazarette that'll take us along more'n three knots in dead calm weather.