"It's liquor of some sort," said the mate, "but we won't risk
broaching it till morning."

"But where did it come from?" I asked.

"Over the side's the only place it could have come from." Mr. Pike
played the light over it. "Look at it! It's been afloat for years
and years."

"The stuff ought to be well-seasoned," commented Mr. Mellaire.

Leaving them to lash the cask securely, I stole along the deck to the
forecastle and peered in. The men, in their headlong flight, had
neglected to close the doors, and the place was afloat. In the
flickering light from a small and very smoky sea-lamp it was a dismal
picture. No self-respecting cave-man, I am sure, would have lived in
such a hole.

Even as I looked a bursting sea filled the runway between the house
and rail, and through the doorway in which I stood the freezing water
rushed waist-deep. I had to hold on to escape being swept inside the
room. From a top bunk, lying on his side, Andy Fay regarded me
steadily with his bitter blue eyes. Seated on the rough table of
heavy planks, his sea-booted feet swinging in the water, Mulligan
Jacobs pulled at his pipe. When he observed me he pointed to pulpy
book-pages that floated about.

"Me library's gone to hell," he mourned as he indicated the flotsam.
"There's me Byron. An' there goes Zola an' Browning with a piece of