after the man came
round behind Jack, and quietly placed before him, with a whisper of
warning that the plate was very hot, another rasher of ham, and at the
first sight of it the lad began to shrink, but at the second glance,
consequent upon a brave desire not to show his repugnance, he saw that
it was a different kind of rasher to the doctor's, and that there was no
egg. It was small and crisp and thin, of a most beautiful brown, with
scarcely any fat, and showing not a drop in the hot plate. There was a
peculiar aroma, too, rising from it, grateful and appetising, and after
sipping at his fresh hot cup of tea--the second--twice, Jack broke off
another fragment of his crisp toast and ate it slowly.

A minute passed away, his four companions eating in sea-going fashion,
which is rather costly to the person that caters, and they were talking
aloud meantime, but every one present made a point of not taking the
slightest notice of the sensitive lad.

That hot tea at the first mouthful of the first cup was nauseating, and
Jack glanced toward the door and waited before venturing upon a second.
But that second mouthful was not so bad, and it seemed to him that the
captain certainly had good tea provided. Then Jack had broken off a
scrap of the brown toast and eaten it, feeling at the end of a minute or
two that he had never before known what well-made toast was like.

And so he had gone on very slowly, but certainly surely, till that piece
of broiled ham--just such a piece as might tempt an invalid--was placed
before him by Edward, who winked afterwards at the steward.

Jack would have resisted with scorn the suggestion that he was an
invalid, and he was in utter ignorance of the doctor having entered into
a conspiracy with the steward and cook just before they sat down; but
that triumvirate had conspired all the same, and the result was that dry
toast and that thin shaving of brown ham, which from the moment it was
placed under his nose began to tempt him.

What wonder! Three days lying in a berth aboard ship, three days of
hardly touching food; and now at last sitting at a pleasant
breakfast-table in an exasperating appetite-sharpening atmosphere, which
came in through the open window along with the bright sunshine, while
four people were cheerily chatting and eating away like men who knew how
good breakfast can be.

Then, too, there was that insidious preparation--that sending in of
skirmishers of dry toast to a