"Stop a minute, Mr Gregory, my dog will smell him out." "Bravo, boy!" cried the first-mate, as Bruff was set down, no light-weight, on the stowed-in cargo.

"Good dog, then!" "Hush!" cried Mark, whose heart was beating painfully.
"Silence there!" cried Mr Small.
"Now, Bruff, old boy, listen." There was utter silence for quite a minute, and then, as the chill of dread deepened, and it seemed as if the hidden man had fainted, the moaning arose once more, but certainly more feebly.
Mark was kneeling and holding Bruff with a hand on each side of the collar, and as the piteous moan arose the dog uttered a sharp bark.
"Good dog, then! Find him, boy!" cried Mark; and as the moaning continued, the dog went scuffling and scratching over the cargo, snuffing here and there, and uttering a bark from time to time.
"No, no, not there," cried the second-mate.
"Let the dog be," said the first; and the result was that Bruff suddenly stopped a dozen yards away from them toward the forecastle, and began scratching and barking loudly.
"It can't be there," said Small, creeping over the packages till he was beside the dog, and then quieting him as he listened.

"Yes; it is!" he cried.

"You can hear him as plain as plain." The first-mate came to his side, and confirmed the assertion; the second-mate endorsed his brother officer's opinion; and now began the terrible task of dragging out the closely fitted-in lading of the ship, so as to work right down to where the poor wretch had concealed himself.
It seemed to Mark's uninitiated eyes to be a task which would take days, but the men set-to with willing hands under the first-mate's guidance, and package after package was hauled out by main force, and sent on to the deck above, till quite a cutting was formed through the cargo.
Every now and then the work was stopped for one of the officers to listen, and make sure that they were working in the right direction, and this precaution was not without its results in the saving of labour, for the faint moanings, more plainly heard now that a portion of the cargo was removed, seemed to be a little more to their right.
Mark Strong's first sensation, after the dog had thoroughly localised the place of the man's imprisonment, was a desire to go right away, to get off the ship and go ashore, where he could be beyond hearing of those terrible moans; but directly after he found himself thinking that it would be very cowardly, worse still that the chief mate and this Mr Morgan would look upon him as being girlish.

The result was that he crept along over the top of the cargo on his hands and knees to just beyond the place where the men were working, and seating himself there, with Bruff between his legs, he watched the progress of the search.
It was a curious experience to a lad fresh from school, and the aspect of the place added to the horror of knowing that a fellow-creature was perhaps dying by inches beneath the sailors' feet.