CHAPTER XXXI.
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.