The exhaustion of nature had caused the unfortunate politician to fall into a troubled doze, when he was aroused by a gentle kick, and saw before him the boy, the battered pannikin, a piece of bread which had unfortunately dropped upon the deck aft of the funnel on its way, and, within the tin, a peculiarly loathsome liquid compound upon which, like the magic island of Delos, floated at large a considerable glob of fat. “I don’t want it,” said George feebly, “take it away.” To his surprise--if surprise is not too strong a word for the faint emotions that still stirred him, the boy began, as the conventional term goes, to look ugly. “Na yer dahn’t!” he said, “yer dahn’t gemme inter trouble, yer brute! Yer gort them two Newcastle men inter trouble, and the myte seyes yer nearly gort im. And yer gort Blacky inter trouble; yer dahn’t ger _me_! Yer gottereatit!” “I can’t!” again said George feebly. “Yer gottereatit!” repeated the boy, with that dogged assumption of authority which so ill fits the young. “By Gawd, if yer get cookie inter trouble, I’ll ave the next watch dahn an’ they’ll skin yer.” “Throw it away,” said George, “there’s a good boy. Throw it overboard. I’ll make it all right in the long run,” he added, nodding encouragingly. The boy looked doubtful. “I dursent,” he said sullenly. “Sides which, ow’ll yer myke it all roight?” “Never you mind,” whispered George mysteriously. “You leave me the bread--I might try that ... the clean part,” he added after a sudden wave of nausea--“but chuck the rest, there’s a good lad. I can’t bear it.” His whisper almost rose to a little scream.... “I can’t bear to look at it.” The boy still continued to eye him doubtfully and contemptuously. “Yer cawn’t myke it all roight!” he said, but he bethought him that if the wretched prisoner could not eat he should catch it from the cook just the same, and that his own interest lay in the disposal of the garbage. He drank a good swill of it himself--he was not over-fed on the _Lily_,--went up on deck for a moment,--and George could hear the splash as the horror went overboard. In a moment the boy had returned. “Yer ought ter be griteful,” he said, “I’ve sived yer a lickin.” “Thank you,” said George warmly, with his mouth full. He had found himself able to munch the bread, and it did him good. The boy lingered; he took the same interest in the stowaway that he might have taken in an animal at the Zoological Gardens, and the episode broke the monotony of his fourth voyage. “Yer’ll ketch it at Parham!” he said in a cheery tone. George did not understand. “Why Parham?” he asked weakly.