"Caught napping, as usual.

I wonder if there ever was a captain yet, that lost a ship with his log-book up to date?
He generally has about a month to fill up on a clean break, like Charles Dickens and his serial novels .-- What a regular, lime-juicer spread!" he added contemptuously.

"Marmalade--and toast for the old man! Nasty, slovenly pigs!" There was something in this criticism of the absent that jarred upon my feelings.

I had no love indeed for Captain Trent or any of his vanished gang; but the desertion and decay of this once habitable cabin struck me hard: the death of man's handiwork is melancholy like the death of man himself; and I was impressed with an involuntary and irrational sense of tragedy in my surroundings.
"This sickens me," I said.

"Let's go on deck and breathe." The captain nodded.