'Beef as tasteless as one's boot if one could imagine it boiled,' said Mrs. Burke, 'pudding like slabs of mortar, biscuits which glide about on the feet of hundreds of little worms called weevils. Edward has had to live on such food in his day, and I believe it is the beef and pork of his seafaring youth that give him his premature looks. He oughtn't to seem his age by ten years.' He eyed her archly and kindly. 'Premature is a good word,' said he. 'Sailors are always too soon in life. Soon with their money, and soon with their drink and pleasures, and soon with their years, so that it is soon over with them.' 'They're a body of workmen I'm very sorry for,' said Mrs. Burke; 'their wrongs are not understood, and they've got no champions.' As she pronounced these words the hairy head of a man, clothed in a Scotch cap, showed in the little square of the forecastle hatch; he took a wary view of the quarter-deck, then rose into the whole body of a man picturesquely attired in a red shirt, blue trousers, a belt round his waist, and a knife in a sheath upon his hip. He was followed by three others, and after a short conversation they came along the decks towards us. Captain Burke, appearing not to notice them, told his wife he was going to fetch his sextant. Mr. Green, the sour-leering mate, was trudging the weather side of the quarter-deck. The man who had first risen, the hairy one of the Scotch cap, exclaimed, as the four of them came to a halt in the gangway: 'Can we have a word with the capt'n, sir?' 'What d'e want?' answered the mate, speaking with half his back turned on them as though he addressed some one out upon the water. 'We're come to complain that the beef to-day ain't according to the articles.' 'As how?' said the mate, still looking seawards. ''Tain't sweet, sir.' 'No call to eat of it,' said the mate, turning his head and letting his leering eye droop upon them. 'That's not the way to speak,' whispered Mrs. Burke to me with a note of impatience and temper. 'Why shouldn't the meat be tainted? It's so in butchers' shops often enough.' 'If there's no call to eat of it there's no call to turn to on it,' said one of the men with a surly laugh. Here Captain Burke arrived with a sextant in his hand. 'What is it, my lads?' said he quickly, but good-humouredly. 'The starboard watch's allowance of meat's gone off, sir,' said the man in the Scotch cap civilly enough. 'The fok'sle's dark with the smell of it,' said another. 'Notice a blue ring round the flame of the lamp?' said the captain. ''Tain't meat for men,' exclaimed the man, who had growled out a laugh. 'Go and bring aft what remains of it,' said Captain Burke, and he stepped to the side and adjusted his sextant to get a meridional observation.