It already looked old and decayed.

The loneliness of years of desertion seemed to have taken possession of it; the atmosphere of dry rot was in the beams and rafters.

To his excited fancy the few disordered blankets and articles of clothing seemed dropping to pieces; in one of the bunks there was a hideous resemblance in the longitudinal heap of clothing to a withered and mummied corpse.

So it might look in after years when some passing stranger--but he stopped.

A dread of the place was beginning to creep over him; a dread of the days to come, when the monotonous sunshine should lay bare the loneliness of these walls; the long, long days of endless blue and cloudless, overhanging solitude; summer days when the wearying, incessant trade winds should sing around that empty shell and voice its desolation.