To be sure, as he earnestly said, this step might have been deferred till daylight; but it seemed too wearisome to wait.

So bethinking me of our tinder-box and candles, I sent him into the boat for them.

Presently, two candles were lit; one of which the Skyeman tied up and down the barbed end of his harpoon; so that upon going below, the keen steel might not be far off, should the light be blown out by a dastard.
Unfastening the cabin scuttle, we stepped downward into the smallest and murkiest den in the world.

The altar-like transom, surmounted by the closed dead-lights in the stem, together with the dim little sky- light overhead, and the somber aspect of every thing around, gave the place the air of some subterranean oratory, say a Prayer Room of Peter the Hermit.

But coils of rigging, bolts of canvas, articles of clothing, and disorderly heaps of rubbish, harmonized not with this impression.