As it transpires, some of the barrels are already open! None of the sealed barrels can be opened easily in any way that Sable can determine unless she's very familiar with how barrels work, but there are in fact a number of already opened barrels on this deck. 

Most are empty, some smelling of old fish or salt in a very different manner than the sea, and none in fact seem to have gunpowder in them, but one is half-full of a very dark substance that looks viscous and extremely sticky. 

Sable pauses at the barrel of sticky, tilting her head. "Huh."

Sticky stuff? On a ship? Maybe some kind of... finish or sealant or something? What would they use...

"Tar!"

Tar is made from oil and it burns she can make torches! Assuming torches can just be a wad of rags on the end of a stick and dipped in tar. Maybe soaked? She'll figure it out.

Okay, back up the stairs, go get a stick, then hurry back down and tear or cut a big strip off one of the most frayed bits of hanging sailcloth.

Now does she tie and dip or dip then tie? If she dips first then there's tar — fuel — all through the wrap, but that'll make tying messier? She doesn't wanna get tar on her hands. Maybe if she dips the middle and leaves the ends out she can just hold onto those? That's worth a try.

Into the tar goes the strip, then it gets wrapped around the end of the stick, back and forth, starting at the middle. Finally she ties it off, and holds it over the barrel for a bit to drip away any excess tar.

The tar is very sticky, and she ends up with it on her hands and anywhere else she puts her hands afterwards, unless she spends some effort to try and clean them, but after all this effort she ends up with something that looks like a torch, and will probably work as a torch. 

Ick. Gross. She has got to find a way to do this without getting sticky next time. For now she'll just use another scrap of sailcloth and maybe the water in the shallows to wash her hands, vigilant against any sign of tentacles while she does. 

The shallows, at least when she visits them this time, are tentacle-free. 

Good. Once she's got her hands clean, she'll light her torch and explore the first lower deck more thoroughly, and then descend further below to do the same.

The first lower deck is much easier to see in the flickering orange light of the torch, even if it smells somewhat strange and plasticky-sweet and unpleasant. Several other barrels are opened on that deck -- most are completely empty, or have naught but crumbs of some kind of food in them, but a few have supplies like rope and sailcloth and tar. Some of the others are sealed tight with no clear way to open them. 

There are also fraying hammocks strung here, one or two or three or four to a section, the sections clearly delineated by the fraying sailcloth separating the sections. There doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason to how the sections are laid out, but they were clearly intended to separate areas from one another, possibly for privacy -- though it's also clear than anyone could have easily pushed them aside if they so wished. 

Some of the areas are using still-sealed barrels as tables of some kind. There's dice with symbols she doesn't recognize and a deck of faded-to-unreadability cards in one room, and another has dozens of little carved figurines of animals and sea creatures, laid out in a menagerie, made of bits of wood or ivory. Everything is covered with a thick layer of dust that has gone undisturbed for quite some time. 

Near the back of the ship is a door, a closed door, that likely leads into further rooms. The door is slightly ajar, but not open enough for Sable to see through without opening it. 

Wow. Lot of supplies. And clearly people lived here. A whole crew had a life on this deck. She wonders what they were like. They made art, and played games. Did they tell stories? Did they have songs?

She also makes a mental note of where things are so she can get supplies if she needs them.

Gosh. Who would abandon such a lovely ship as this?

She makes her way back toward that door, and opens it to look inside.

The door opens on a small room with a large sailcloth curtain on either side, leaving naught but a small hallway towards another door in the back. On each side of the room, once shrouded by curtains that can do little to hide anymore, is a small bed, the mattresses lumpy and torn, the straw filling spilled out onto the floor. The areas each have their own small table, one that was once clearly kept neat and clean and tidy with naught but a kerosene lamp and a small stack of books atop it, though time has covered it with dust, and the books do not look readable anymore. The table on the other side is covered with assorted knick-knacks and small objects, strewn about haphazardly. They, too, are covered with the dust and detritus of age and time. 

Wow. Officers maybe? It's really neat to see all this. She wishes she could have known these people.

Also, if would be nice if she knew where some kerosene was. That lamp would be so handy right now. Oh well.

After a few minutes perusing the knickknacks and imagining how the officers lived, she heads toward the last door at the back.

This door leads to a large-ish room, with once-tasteful sea-green wallpaper that has been ragged and worn down to strips and waterlogged curling pieces by time and mist. The edges of the room have detailed moulding, with flecks of gold paint that catch the flickering torchlight as Sable stands looking. The portholes in the room are also surrounded by the same sort of detailed gold-painted moulding. The room was clearly intended to be unusually beautiful once, or at least unusually beautiful for being on a ship of sail. 

The room contains a sizeable desk, which has on it a kerosene lamp, cracked and dusty but looks like it still might work. The desk has a chair sat at it, and a spot for an inkwell, though the inkwell and any quills or any papers are missing. Instead, the shelves to the right contain several tubes wrapped in a slick fabric clearly designed to keep out water. The desk has a couple of drawers, and a chair is sat at it while two other are in places in the room such that all three could be turned towards one another for a conversation, if such a conversation was desired. 

At the far end of the room is another door. 

"Oh," she sighs out, delighted. "Your captain must've loved you."

She caresses the desk and a wall gently. "I wonder why they stopped here with you."

With a brief shake, Sable checks the lamp to see if there's any kerosene left in it, before moving on to the drawers.

The lamp has long since run dry. There may be more kerosene somewhere, but if so, Sable hasn't passed it, yet. 

The desk and drawers are made of a dark wood that Sable is unfamiliar with. It's quite solid, but time and water has warped it, and so the drawers stick and are difficult to open, but they give way to being jiggled and some physical force, though they don't always open all the way. Inside she finds: half a dozen quills, some bottles of ink, pieces of paper with the writing on them unreadable due to the ink slowly spreading across the papers, a stack of paper that has not yet been using for writing (though is quite damp and not usable in its current state), several brass-and-glass instruments that look like they're the sort of things navigators should have (but she's not able to determine what they are or how they work), and other random bits and bobs of glass and dark wood and brass (gears, lenses, screws and tubes and things Sable cannot even categorize), some of which have been partly combined to do... something, though Sable has no way of telling what. 

"Ooooh. Your captain liked to tinker with stuff, huh?"

She's so curious what the instruments do, and the other unexplained mechanisms as well. Those will have to be saved for later, though. She carefully closes the drawers again, then makes her way to the unopened door to see what's inside. She's not really sure why she's talking to the ship. Ships don't talk back, so...

Eh. It's not like anyone's here to make fun of her.

The ship creaks slowly, almost like an affectionate sigh.

Through the door is a room as large as the last, slightly better lit if only from the extra portholes at the rear of the ship (though that matters little, given just how was the water-reflected cave light is compared to her flickering torch). 

At the far end of the room is a bed, as large and lavish as can be gotten away with on such a vessel; taking up most of the back half of the room and made of hard wood that's held up through its long lonely stay here in the damp cave, its posters carved with abstract scrollwork still standing proud and tall. 

The rest of the bed, however, has not lasted nearly so well. The mattress was clearly knifed open at some point, its soft down plundered for some other use, and what sheets and canopy remain have been unraveled and warped by time and damp, giving off a slightly unpleasant smell of age and mildew. 

"Oh wow. This was lovely. The mattress needs to be replaced, clearly, but goodness..."

Why would someone need a bed that large? Sure grown-ups are bigger, but...

Oh.

She blushes, and then looks around the rest of the room to distract herself a bit.

Besides the bed, there's a small bedside table, and a large wardrobe in the opposite corner of the room, complete with a small chest of drawers underneath. To her left is a small folding table, partly collapsed, and a couple of chairs, upholstered in a fabric that might have been a pale sea green once but is now water-stained and faded beyond recognition. They might have been comfortable once, but they look lumpy and misshapen now, even in the flickering torchlight. 

"This really was quite a lovely bedroom. I wonder where we'd find replacements for everything..."

The ship creaks gently. The sound feels... almost hopeful?

Well, she'll have to keep exploring. She thinks that's this deck done? If there isn't anything else, she'll look to continue down to the next deck below.