The noise was continued, and he hastened to the door of his state room, and threw it open.

In the room he found Dave hard at work on the furniture; he had taken out the berth sack, and was brushing out the inside of the berth.

The noise had been made by the shaking of the slats on which the mattress rested.

Davis Talbot, the cabin steward of the Bronx, had been captured in the vessel when she was run out of Pensacola Bay some months before.

As he was a very intelligent colored man, or rather mulatto, though they were all the same at the South, the young commander had selected him for his present service; and he never had occasion to regret the choice.