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. But the game's up. 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 storeroom,
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 blooming dawl! O, you 'don't
know,' don't you? O, it 'gets you,' do it? O, I dessay! W'y, weren't you
'owling for fresh tins every blessed day? 'Ow often 'ave I 'eard you
send the 'ole bloomin' dinner off and tell the man to chuck it in the
swill-tub? And breakfast? O, my crikey! breakfast for ten, and you
'ollerin' for more! And now you 'can't 'most tell'! Blow me if it ain't
enough to make a man write an insultin' letter to Gawd! You dror it
mild, John Dyvis: don't 'andle me; I'm dyngerous."

Davis sat like one bemused; it might even have been doubted if he heard,
but the voice of the clerk rang about the cabin like that of a cormorant
among the ledges of the cliff.

"That will do, Huish," said Herrick.

"O, so you tyke his part, do you? you stuck-up, sneerin' snob. Tyke it
then. Come on, the pair of you. But as for John Dyvis, let him look out!
He struck me the first night aboard, and I never