Thither I
went. It was very bare; a few photographs were tacked
on the bulkhead, one of them indecent; a single chest
stood open, and, like all we had yet found, it had been
partly rifled. An armful of two-shilling novels proved
to me beyond a doubt it was a European's; no Chinaman
would have possessed any, and the most literate Kanaka
conceivable in a ship's galley was not likely to have
gone beyond one. It was plain, then, that the cook had
not berthed aft, and I must look elsewhere.
The men had stamped down the nests and driven the birds
from the galley, so that I could now enter without
contest. One door had been already blocked with rice;
the place was in part darkness, full of a foul stale
smell, and a cloud of nasty flies; it had been left,
besides, in some disorder, or else the birds, during
their time of tenancy, had knocked the things about;
and the floor, like the deck before we washed it, was
spread with pasty filth. Against the wall, in the far
corner, I found a handsome chest of camphor-wood bound
with brass, such as Chinamen and sailors love, and
indeed all of mankind that plies in the Pacific.
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