Chapter 31

THE GUNNER UNDER HATCHES.

Among such a crowd of marked characters as were to be met with on
board our frigate, many of whom moved in mysterious circles beneath
the lowermost deck, and at long intervals flitted into sight like
apparitions, and disappeared again for whole weeks together, there
were some who inordinately excited my curiosity, and whose names,
callings, and precise abodes I industriously sought out, in order
to learn something satisfactory concerning them.

While engaged in these inquiries, often fruitless, or but
partially gratified, I could not but regret that there was no
public printed Directory for the Neversink, such as they have in
large towns, containing an alphabetic list of all the crew, and
where they might be found. Also, in losing myself in some remote,
dark corner of the bowels of the frigate, in the vicinity of the
various store-rooms, shops, and warehouses, I much lamented that
no enterprising tar had yet thought of compiling a _Hand-book of
the Neversink_, so that the tourist might have a reliable guide.

Indeed, there were several parts of the ship under hatches shrouded
in mystery, and completely inaccessible to the sailor.

Wondrous old doors, barred and bolted in dingy bulkheads, must have
opened into regions full of interest to a successful explorer.

They looked like the gloomy entrances to family vaults of buried
dead; and when I chanced to see some unknown functionary insert
his key, and enter these inexplicable apartments with a battle-
lantern, as if on solemn official business, I almost quaked to
dive in with him, and satisfy myself whether these vaults indeed
contained the mouldering relics of by-gone old Commodores and
Post-captains. But the habitations of the living commodore and
captain--their spacious and curtained cabins--were themselves
almost as sealed volumes, and I passed them in hopeless
wonderment, like a peasant before a prince's palace. Night and
day armed sentries guarded their sacred portals, cutlass in hand;
and had I dared to cross their path, I would infallibly have been
cut down, as if in battle. Thus, though for a period of more than
a year I was an inmate of this floating box of live-oak, yet
there were numberless things in it that, to the last, remained
wrapped in obscurity, or concerning which I could only lose
myself in vague speculations. I was as a Roman Jew of the Middle
Ages, confined to the Jews' quarter of the town, and forbidden to
stray beyond my limits. Or I was as a modern traveller in the
same famous city, forced to quit it at last without gaining
ingress to the most mysterious haunts--the innermost shrine of
the Pope, and the dungeons and cells of the Inquisition.

But among all the persons