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Updated: May 5, 2025
The skylight above being now blocked up and the ports and side scuttles closed, the cuddy was only dimly illuminated by a couple of glass bull's-eyes let into the deck above, and one of the swinging lamps that were suspended at intervals over the long table that occupied the centre of the saloon, the rest being untrimmed and only this one lit.
Two housemaids, and an odd man who looked after the coal scuttles, were produced, and gave their evidence in a manner which would have laid them open to the charge of rank prevarication and perjury, as to the receipt of a certain wooden box, which at some stages of the inquiry became hopelessly entangled with a hamper from the Petersfield fishmonger, and a band-box from Lady Palliser's Brighton milliner.
Colossal jungles, resembling brakes of moss and canes five hundred or a thousand feet in height creeks as black as porter, gliding under their dank and rotting aisles mountainous quadrupeds or lizards crashing and tearing through their branches one of them at least six hundred feet in length, with a ridgy back and long spiky tail, dragging on the ground, a baleful green eye, and a crooked mouth full of horrid fangs, which made it look the very incarnation of cruelty and brute strength black lakes and grisly reeds as high as bamboo prodigious black serpents troubling the water, and rearing their long spiry necks above the surface gigantic alligators and crocodiles resting motionless in the shallows, with their snouts high in the air hideous toads or such-like forbidding reptiles, many with tusks like the walrus, and some with glorious eyes, crouching on the banks or waddling in the reeds, and so enormous as to give variety to the landscape volcanic craters, with red-hot lava simmering in their depths, and emitting fumes of sulphur, which might have choked us had we not closed the scuttles while over all great dragons and other bat-like animals were flitting through the dusky atmosphere like demons in a nightmare.
Those who attempted to escape through the scuttles were met by the police in the rooms below; or if one chanced to reach the street, he was knocked down by those keeping guard there. Some dropped from second and third story windows, and met with a worse fate than those who staid behind.
Now the pup seemed to be filled with the spirit o' th' Lord all on a sudden, after th' fashion o' th' talking jackass i' th' Scriptures; for if a didna talk a did th' next thing to 't a tried to. And after pulling at my heels like as though a fiend had got him, a scuttles into th' thicket, for no cause, as I could see, but to give me th' benefit o' example. So in goes I after him.
It seemed to have been chopped out with an Axe, and was meant to hold up Members of the Rhinoceros Family. On the High Shelf was a Row of double-handled Shaving Mugs, crippled Beer Steins, undersized Coal Scuttles and various Copper Kettles that had seen Better Days. "At last we have a Room that satisfies every Craving of my Soul," said the Wife.
A somewhat strong swell of the sea would certainly submerge the "Waldeck" in a few moments. The brig's deck had been swept from one end to the other. There was nothing left except the stumps of the mainmast and of the mizzen-mast, both broken off two feet above the scuttles, and which had fallen in the collision, carrying away shrouds, back-stays, and rigging.
It is particularly inviting on returning from a spell at sea, when one goes below from the wet and chilly upper deck, to find everybody talking at the top of their voices, and pipes, cigarettes, and the stove all going full blast together. If it is after sunset and the ship is "darkened" the scuttles will all have their deadlights down, and the place will be very, what we may call "frowsty."
Friday, and a part of Saturday, we were engaged in this work, until we had thrown out all but what we wanted under our cargo on the passage home; when, as the next day was Sunday, and a good day for smoking ship, we cleared everything out of the cabin and forecastle, made a slow fire of charcoal, birch bark, brimstone, and other matters, on the ballast in the bottom of the hold, calked up the hatches and every open seam, and pasted over the cracks of the windows, and the slides of the scuttles and companion-way.
During the night, from the 14th to the 15th of December, the two irreconcilable friends were busy observing the lunar disc, J. T. Maston abusing the learned Belfast as usual, who was by his side; the secretary of the Gun Club maintaining for the thousandth time that he had just seen the projectile, and adding that he could see Michel Ardan's face looking through one of the scuttles, at the same time enforcing his argument by a series of gestures which his formidable hook rendered very unpleasant.
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