Almost immediately after leaving Amsterdam old Paterson had set up his insistent croak; from his hammock under the poop when the roaring officers called the shifting watches, on the sleety deck and aloft in the wind-taut rigging, and the last thing at night in the great cabin, even at the solemn moment of common prayer, when his captain and master slowly read the form of evening supplication, this ancient and discontented shellback continually muttered his plaint to wind and waves and willing and unwilling ears, “As we work, so shall we eat.” If looks could kill, the poor cook of the _George_ would long since have perished amid his pots and pans, for it was when, at the appointed times, or as the emergencies of the ship demanded, old Paterson rolled with his pannikin and mess-kid to the galley that his obsessing whine became a shriek and his filmy eye burned upon the humble dispenser of the victuals with a consuming hate. Not that the cook, in himself, offended old Paterson, but because he became a symbol of oppressive shipmasters and exacting shipowners who sought to pare another penny of profit from the stringy stomachs of their ’foremasting slaves. Justice would indeed be blindfolded, nay, have no eyes at all, if she could not see that old Paterson had some cause for complaint. Little meat and less bread; rum thimbled out as reluctantly as a small boy dividing his lollipops under compulsion; a menu, in fact, made up of tepid water tinctured to the point of tantalizing with suggestions of what might, under proper conditions, have been food, made meager fare for men lashed into crying hunger by the snapping sea gales. And when still a long way from Santa Cruz, in the Azores, whither the _George_ was bound, the twenty-four men of the crew were put on “short allowance”, old Paterson, with his croak, became a soloist now supported by a chorus. “Short allowance”--certainly, an artful misuse of the comparative degree--had always been short, and in truth could only be called shortest. At Santa Cruz they sluggishly laded the ship with beeswax, and although the chandlers pressed importunately about the skipper, he gave no orders for any considerable increase in the provisions for the homeward voyage. Were they to make the journey back on that misnamed “short allowance?” It rather looked as though they would. Cargo was stuffed into the hold in plenty, but no fresh sides of beef came to cheer the toiling seamen; no flour, no bread, nothing but a few bottles of wine which, however, went into the great cabin and the custody of the thrifty key. Perhaps provisions would come aboard when the loading was done; at least the younger and less sophisticated men hoped, but old Paterson shook his earrings and clubbed pigtail. He had followed the sea long enough to know the character of his ship.