CHAPTER XXX.
A PEEP THROUGH A PORT-HOLE AT THE SUBTERRANEAN PARTS OF A MAN-OF-WAR.
While now running rapidly away from the bitter coast of Patagonia, battling with the night-watches--still cold--as best we may; come under the lee of my white-jacket, reader, while I tell of the less painful sights to be seen in a frigate.
A hint has already been conveyed concerning the subterranean depths of the Neversink's hold.

But there is no time here to speak of the _spirit-room_, a cellar down in the after-hold, where the sailor's "grog" is kept; nor of the _cabletiers_, where the great hawsers and chains are piled, as you see them at a large ship-chandler's on shore; nor of the grocer's vaults, where tierces of sugar, molasses, vinegar, rice, and flour are snugly stowed; nor of the _sail-room_, full as a sail-maker's loft ashore--piled up with great top-sails and top-gallant-sails, all ready-folded in their places, like so many white vests in a gentleman's wardrobe; nor of the copper and copper-fastened _magazine_, closely packed with kegs of powder, great-gun and small-arm cartridges; nor of the immense _shot-lockers_, or subterranean arsenals, full as a bushel of apples with twenty-four-pound balls; nor of the _bread-room_, a large apartment, tinned all round within to keep out the mice, where the hard biscuit destined for the consumption of five hundred men on a long voyage is stowed away by the cubic yard; nor of the vast iron tanks for fresh water in the hold, like the reservoir lakes at Fairmount, in Philadelphia; nor of the _paint-room_, where the kegs of white-lead, and casks of linseed oil, and all sorts of pots and brushes, are kept; nor of the _armoror's smithy_, where the ship's forges and anvils may be heard ringing at times; I say I have no time to speak of these things, and many more places of note.
But there is one very extensive warehouse among the rest that needs special mention--_the ship's Yeoman's storeroom_.

In the Neversink it was down in the ship's basement, beneath the berth-deck, and you went to it by way of the _Fore-passage_, a very dim, devious corridor, indeed.

Entering--say at noonday--you find yourself in a gloomy apartment, lit by a solitary lamp.

On one side are shelves, filled with balls of _marline, ratlin-stuf, seizing-stuff, spun-yarn_, and numerous twines of assorted sizes.