I'll take the forenoon watch, an' you might overhaul the ship for stowaways after breakfast.

Never heard of one on this journey--I've routed out as many as twenty at a time w'en I was runnin' between Wellington an' Sydney--but you never can tell, so 'ave a squint round." "Yes, sir," said Hozier, and that is how it fell to his lot to discover Iris Yorke, looking very white and miserable, when the hatch of the lazarette was broken open at half-past eight o'clock on Thursday morning! A tramp steamer is not a complex organism.

She is made up of holds, bunkers, boilers and engines, with scanty accommodation for officers and crew grouped round the funnel or stuck in the bows.

When the boats were stripped of their tarpaulins, and a few lockers and store-rooms examined, the only available hiding-places were the shaft tunnel, the holds, and the lazarette, a small space between decks, situated directly above the propeller, where a reserve supply of provisions is generally carried.
But the door of the lazarette was locked, and the key missing, though it ought to be hanging with others, all duly labeled, on a hook in the steward's cabin.

A duplicate set of keys in the captain's possession was far from complete.