closed.

I shout--I shout repeatedly. No response. My voice is smothered. The
air I breathe is hot, heavy, thick, and the working of my lungs will
become difficult, impossible, unless the store of air is renewed.

I extend my arms and feel about me, and this is what I conclude:

I am in a compartment with sheet-iron walls, which cannot measure more
than four cubic yards. I can feel that the walls are of bolted plates,
like the sides of a ship's water-tight compartment.

I can feel that the entrance to it is by a door on one side, for the
hinges protrude somewhat. This door must open inwards, and it is
through here, no doubt, that I was carried in.

I place my ear to the door, but not a sound can be heard. The silence
is as profound as the obscurity--a strange silence that is only broken
by the sonorousness of the metallic floor when I move about. None of
the dull noises usually to be heard on board a ship is perceptible,
not even the rippling of the water along the hull. Nor is there the
slightest movement to be felt; yet, in the estuary of the Neuse, the
current is always strong enough, to cause a marked oscillation to any
vessel.

But does the compartment in which I am confined, really belong to
a ship? How do I know that I am afloat on the Neuse, though I was
conveyed a short distance in a boat? Might not the latter, instead of
heading for a ship in waiting for it, opposite Healthful House, have
been rowed to a point further down the river? In this case is it not