When the duck course was done the captain would not let the birds be taken away, but kept them in his sight. When the consul left, the captain had to escort him to the gangway, but he ushered the mates out first, so that they would not have a chance to snatch a drumstick, and, before he left the cabin, he had Smutje take the ducks away to the pantry. Nauke and I watched all this from the skylight. There was no chance for us to use our boathook. The pantry, however, could be reached from the bull's-eye. We waited till Smutje had gone to his bunk, and then stole our way to the bull's-eye. I reached in. Good luck. The pantry was open. Smutje must have forgotten to close it. The unfortunate part of it, however, was that it was the captain who had left the pantry door open. He had stolen down to have his fill of ducks, and at this moment was sitting at a table with a bird before him. His back was turned to the pantry. I fished around and first got a big handful of plum and apple stuffing, which I put in my pants pocket for safe keeping. I was very quiet about it, and the captain heard nothing. I felt around again, and found a whole, fine bird. It must have been my excitement and delight which caused me to make a slight noise. The captain looked around and saw the magnificent fowl suspended in midair and going away. With half a drumstick in his mouth he yelled: "My bird!" Then he jumped, and grabbed my arm just as it was disappearing. "Let go that bird," he howled, twisting my arm. I let the bird go, and kept silent in spite of the pain, hoping that he would let me go without learning who I was. He reached for a rope and spliced my arm to the brass handle of the drawer. Nauke reached into my pants pocket and took out the stuffing to save it from destruction during the coming licking. The captain came out. "Oh, it's you, Phelax. You don't like ducks, do you? But you like the rope's end." With that, he gave me an awful beating with a rope's end. I howled, by Joe. Limping and sore, I went forward to get my share of the stuffing from Nauke. He had eaten it all. That made me so angry that, in spite of my soreness, I passed a good share of my licking on to him. Smutje shook his head and remarked sadly that the society of thieves had corrupted the only honest fellow aboard.