re the consul could think better of
it. Tell you what: I guess I'll take stock.'

And he rose from table and disappeared with a lamp in the lazarette.

''Ere's another screw loose,' observed Huish.

'My man,' said Herrick, with a sudden gleam of animosity, 'it is still
your watch on deck, and surely your wheel also?'

'You come the 'eavy swell, don't you, ducky?' said Huish.

'Stand away from that binnacle. Surely your w'eel, my man. Yah.'

He lit a cigar ostentatiously, and strolled into the waist with his
hands in his pockets.

In a surprisingly short time, the captain reappeared; he did not look at
Herrick, but called Huish back and sat down.

'Well,' he began, 'I've taken stock--roughly.' He paused as if for
somebody to help him out; and none doing so, both gazing on him instead
with manifest anxiety, he yet more heavily resumed. 'Well, it won't
fight. We can't do it; that's the bed rock. I'm as sorry as what you can
be, and sorrier. We can't look near Samoa. I don't know as we could get
to Peru.'

'Wot-ju mean?' asked Huish brutally.

'I can't 'most tell myself,' replied the captain. 'I drew it fine; I
said I did; but what's been going on here gets me! Appears as if the
devil had been around. That cook must be the holiest kind of fraud. Only
twelve days, too! Seems like craziness. I'll own up square to one thing:
I seem to have figured too fine upon the flour. But the rest--my land!
I'll never understand it! There's been more waste on this twopenny
ship than what there is to an Atlantic Liner.' He stole a glance at his
companions; nothing good was to be gleaned from their dark faces; and he
had recourse to rage. 'You wait till I interview that cook!' he roared
and smote the table with his fist. 'I'll interview the son of a gun so's
he's never been spoken to before. I'll put a bead upon the--'

'You will not lay a finger on the man,' said Herrick. 'The fault is
yours and you know it. If you turn a savage loose in your store-room,
you know what to expect. I will not allow the man to be molested.'

It is hard to say how Davis might have taken this defiance; but he was
diverted to a fresh assailant.

'Well!' drawled Huish, 'you're a plummy captain, ain't you? You're a
blooming captain! Don't you, set up any of your chat to me, John Dyvis:
I know you now, you ain't any more use than a bloomin' dawl! Oh, you
"don't know", don't you? Oh, it "gets you", do it? Oh, I dessay! W'y,
we en't you 'owling for fresh