He patted the little boy with his left hand, with his right kept the boat’s head straight as a line. “Come, sir, wake up, please. Biscuit’s going to be served out,” said Winyard, pulling the actor somewhat unceremoniously by the arm. Both seamen thought him a white-livered gentleman, and despised him accordingly. The poor man lay athwart the boat, his legs doubled up and his arms hiding his face. He shook his head, without raising it, when Winyard pulled him, but did not speak. The man, thinking him numbed or cramped, raised him up; whereupon St. Aubyn struggled to his feet, and looked about him with a fixed smile. That smile made his face terrible to behold, for he was deadly white, and a wild fire, with no more merriment in it than a madman’s laugh, shone in his eyes, which looked unnaturally large, and his lips were blue and thin, and laid his teeth almost bare. “You fellows may shrug your shoulders, and some of you may hiss,” he muttered, never remitting his fixed smile, but speaking through his teeth and bringing his clenched fist upon his knee, “but you shan’t starve me, because you don’t understand what true acting means. Do you think I can’t tell what this hollowness, this sinking is, here!” laying his hand upon his stomach and sending his lustrous eyes travelling over the others, who watched him in silence. “You are starving me, you fiends, and driving a poor actor to death. But do you think you will force him into the workhouse? No, by God! He has spirit, and will seek a new home, a new country, a new world, rather! Who tells me I cannot act? Try me in farce, in comedy, in tragedy! See now--shall I play you Tony Lumpkin?” He began to sing: “‘Then, come, put the jorum about, And let us be merry and clever! Our hearts and our liquor are stout, Here’s the three Jolly Pigeons for ever.’ “Or shall I give you Lear?” He stretched out his hands to the sea:-- “‘Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks! rage! blow! You cataracts and hurricanoes, spout Till you have drench’d our steeples, drown’d the cocks! You sulphurous and thought-executing fires, Vaunt-couriers to oak-cleaving thunderbolts, Sings my white head!’ Is not that fine, gentlemen? Now turn about with more shrugs, and drive me mad with your cant. Ha! ha! ha!” His laughter was shocking. The seamen shrank away from him. “He has gone mad with terror!” whispered the General. The widow hid her face in her hands. “Johnson,” said Holdsworth, “mix some rum and water in that pannikin and give it to him with a biscuit.” The actor took both, staring first at the pannikin, then at the biscuit. “Gentlemen!” he cried, with his wild smile, “I am Timon of Athens, sour, crusty, and” ... he stopped with a laugh. “But before his mind went, he pledged his friends, standing thus:--‘Here’s to you--dogs!’” He flung the contents of the pannikin at Holdsworth, and dashed the vessel into the boat; “and with this, I feed the winds!” and he hurled the biscuit into the sea.