I fancy we're all hungry enough to eat anything raw when we gets it, without botherin' about cooking to-day at any rate!" A grunt of assent came from all the hands standing by at this remark; and I then turned round to see what Captain Miles and Jake were about in the cabin.

I had not yet entered that apartment, the finding of the steward's dead body having scared me away.

The pallid corpse looked so ghastly and terrible! As I turned to go to the after portion of the vessel I was almost afraid that I should see the dead body of the steward again; but on reaching the entrance to the cabin I noticed a tarpaulin covering it in the corner, and I went hastily by, turning my face away, and bolting within the swing doors.
Here, if the jumble of miscellaneous odds and ends under the break of the forecastle had struck me as strange, the confusion was ever so much worse; for, nothing having been washed out, the entire furniture of every separate berth, as well as of the main saloon, were mixed together in one indistinguishable mass--clothes, books, food and crockery-ware, perishable and imperishable goods alike, all mingled in one inharmonious whole.
Blankets, bedding, and pillows were piled on the chairs and benches that had surrounded the centre table, which article, with its legs upstanding, was jammed into the captain's own sanctum, half in and half out, like the cow had been; while the fragments of plates and dishes, coffee-pots and glass-ware of all description, were scattered on the floor in every direction.

Captain Miles's sextant and the tell-tale compass, that used to hang from the middle of the ceiling of the deck above, reposed peaceably together on the top of a double Gloucester cheese.

Every variety of eatable was mixed up higgledy piggledy with articles for table use, and all sorts of known and unknown garments.
My trunk had not escaped the general destruction, the new outfit with which I had been provided being all spoilt; while some pictures and various cherished mementoes of my old West Indian home shared the fate of Mr Marline's wardrobe and the captain's kit.
Indeed, the sea had performed its scouring work so well, that it would have puzzled a wiser man than Solomon to have decided what was each individual's personal property, the whole having been thrown together like one of the odd lots at an auction sale.
After surveying the medley for a few moments, my attention was attracted to Captain Miles and Jake, the latter of whom was down within the store- room under the hatch in the stern-sheets, only his woolly head projecting, handing up several tins of potted meats and bags of biscuit to the captain; while the latter was placing these as he received them on a clear space of the deck from which he had swept the broken refuse away, checking off the things as Jake ferreted them out from below, his head bobbing down and up again each moment.
"There," said Captain Miles, as I came up to the two; "three bags of biscuit, four seven-pound tins of boiled mutton, two tins of preserved vegetables, one ham, one cheese, six pounds of coffee, and one firkin of butter.