Almost every inch is occupied; almost every inch is in plain sight; and almost every inch is continually being visited and explored.

Added to all this, was the deadly hostility of the whole tribe of ship-underlings--master-at-arms, ship's corporals, and boatswain's mates,--both to the poet and his casket.

They hated his box, as if it had been Pandora's, crammed to the very lid with hurricanes and gales.
They hunted out his hiding-places like pointers, and gave him no peace night or day.
Still, the long twenty-four-pounders on the main-deck offered some promise of a hiding-place to the box; and, accordingly, it was often tucked away behind the carriages, among the side tackles; its black colour blending with the ebon hue of the guns.
But Quoin, one of the quarter-gunners, had eyes like a ferret.

Quoin was a little old man-of-war's man, hardly five feet high, with a complexion like a gun-shot wound after it is healed.

He was indefatigable in attending to his duties; which consisted in taking care of one division of the guns, embracing ten of the aforesaid twenty-four-pounders.