Explore "In the Sargasso Sea" by Thomas A. Janvier on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
The sun by that time being risen so high that the mist was changing again to a golden haze, and the cabin of the barque well lighted through the skylight over it, I felt less creepy and uncomfortable as I went down the companion-way than I had felt when I went below into the old brig's dusky cabin in the early dawn. But for all that I walked gingerly, and stopped to sniff at every step that I took downward; for I could not by any means get rid of my dread of coming upon some grewsome thing. However, the air was sweet enough -- the slide of the hatch being closed, but the doors open and the cabin well ventilated -- and when I got to the foot of the stair I saw nothing horrible in my first sharp look around.
It was a small cabin, but comfortably fitted; and almost the first thing that caught my eye was a work-basket spilled down into a corner and some spools and a pair of rusty scissors lying on the floor, and then in another corner I saw a little chair. And the sight of these things, which told that the barque's captain had had his wife and his child along with him, gave me a heavy sorrowful feeling -- for all that if death had come to this sea-family the pain of it must have been over quickly a long while back in the past.