first served, and otherwise were treated with much respect.

Among other devices to kill time, during the frequent calms, Long
Ghost hit upon the game of chess. With a jack-knife, we carved the
pieces quite tastefully out of bits of wood, and our board was the
middle of a chest-lid, chalked into squares, which, in playing, we
straddled at either end. Having no other suitable way of
distinguishing the sets, I marked mine by tying round them little
scarfs of black silk, torn from an old neck-handkerchief. Putting
them in mourning this way, the doctor said, was quite appropriate,
seeing that they had reason to feel sad three games out of four. Of
chess, the men never could make head nor tail; indeed, their wonder
rose to such a pitch that they at last regarded the mysterious
movements of the game with something more than perplexity; and after
puzzling over them through several long engagements, they came to the
conclusion that we must be a couple of necromancers.



CHAPTER X.

A SEA-PARLOUR DESCRIBED, WITH SOME OF ITS TENANTS

I MIGHT as well give some idea of the place in which the doctor and I
lived together so sociably.

Most persons know that a ship's forecastle embraces the forward part
of the deck about the bowsprit: the same term, however, is generally
bestowed upon the sailors' sleeping-quarters, which occupy a space
immediately beneath, and are partitioned off by a bulkhead.