The lower apartments of the vessel, though less striking in their equipments than the upper cabin were arranged with great attention to neatness and comfort.  A few offices for the servants occupied the extreme after-part of the ship, communicating by doors with the dining apartment of the secondary officers; or, as it was called in technical language, the “ward-room.”  On either side of this, again, were the state-rooms, an imposing name, by which the dormitories of those who are entitled to the honours of the quarter-deck are ever called.  Forward of the ward-room, came the apartments of the minor officers; and, immediately in front of them, the corps of the individual who was called the General was lodged, forming, by their discipline, a barrier between the more lawless seamen and their superiors.

There was little departure, in this disposition of the accommodations, from the ordinary arrangements of vessels of war of the same description and force as the “Rover;” but Wilder had not failed to remark that the bulkheads which separated the cabins from the birth-deck, or the part occupied by the crew, were far stouter than common, and that a small howitzer was at hand, to be used, as a physician might say, internally, should occasion require.  The doors were of extraordinary strength, and the means of barricadoing them resembled more a preparation for battle, than the usual securities against petty encroachments on private property.  Muskets, blunderbusses, pistols, sabres, half-pikes, &c., were fixed to the beams and carlings, or were made to serve as ornaments against the different bulkheads, in a profusion that plainly told they were there as much for use as for show.  In short, to the eye of a seaman, the whole betrayed a state of things, in which the superiors felt that their whole security, against the violence and insubordination of their inferiors, depended on their influence and their ability to resist, united; and that the former had not deemed it prudent to neglect any of the precautions which might aid their comparatively less powerful physical force.

In the principal of the lower apartments, or the ward-room, the Rover found his newly enlisted lieutenant apparently busy in studying the regulations of the service in which he had just embarked.  Approaching the corner in which the latter had seated himself, the former said, in a frank, encouraging, and even confidential manner,——­

“I hope you find our laws sufficiently firm, Mr Wilder.”

“Want of firmness is not their fault; if the same quality can always be observed in administering them, it is well,” returned the other, rising to salute his superior.  “I have never found such rigid rules, even in”——­

“Even in what, sir?” demanded the Rover, perceiving that his companion hesitated.

“I was about to say, ‘Even in his Majesty’s service,’” returned Wilder, slightly colouring.  “I know not whether it may be a fault, or a recommendation, to have served in a King’s ship.”