‘I votes as how we should let on to the port watch,’ presently said a man, as he finished off his repast with a handful of muscatels and blanched almonds. ‘Ay,’ responded old Nestor. ‘It do seem mean, us livin’ high, an’ them a-drawin’ their belts tighter every day. Besides,’ added he, meditatively, ‘company is pleasing; an’ there’ll be all the more for Pentridge. Not that I thinks it needs come to that if we’re careful. But (with a doubtful shake of the head) I’m afraid the grog’ll be too much for some of us when we gits to it.’ A word here as to the _Sardanapalus_. She was one of the old-fashioned frigate-built ships—somewhat slow, but comfortable. Carrying, as per owner’s advertisement, ‘a first-class milch cow and surgeon,’ she was rather a favourite with that description of passengers who, obeying a doctor’s prescription, were obliged to take ‘a long sea voyage.’ The passage money was very high. There were no ‘intermediates,’ no subdivisions. A very good table was kept, and the ‘dog-basket’ and ‘menavelings’ from it alone would have supplied the fo’c’stle twice over. But for these leavings a host of ill-fed, brass-bound apprentices, boys, and petty officers were ever on the watch—the former knowing as crows, sharp as kites. Foremast Jack had not the ghost of a chance with them. Ever since she slipped along the ways the _Sardanapalus_ had borne the reputation of being a ‘hungry ship.’ More than half-a-dozen times had she hauled into dock with a collar of clean picked beef bones around her figure-head. It was currently understood that the skipper ‘found’ the ship. He was an Orkney man, owned a part of her; and probably did so. She was a regular trader at that time. She is now a custom-house hulk in an East Indian harbour. The chief officer was a native of Vermont, U.S., and, with regard to the crew, a bit of a bully. As he was wont to often inform them, with the national snuffle intensified,— ‘I’m a big lump of a horse—a high-bred stepper—an’ when I kick bones fly.’ He came out a loser by this gift, as will be presently seen. Long before the opening of this yarn the crew had remonstrated with their superiors about their food. The captain had laughed at them, and the mate inquired whether they imagined the _Sardanapalus_ had been specially fitted out as a cook-shop for their pleasure. Perhaps it was this that now made them linger joyfully over their stolen meals; and, occasionally, explore with naked lights the ‘general’ when they ought to have been sleeping on empty stomachs in their watch below.