Quite methodically, just as part of the day’s work, the steward chopped down with his knife, catching the log-line between the steel edge and the rail. At once, no longer buoyed up by the _Elsinore’s_ two-knot drag ahead, the wounded men began to swim and flounder. The circling hosts of huge sea-birds descended upon them, with carnivorous beaks striking at their heads and shoulders and arms. A great screeching and squawking arose from the winged things of prey as they strove for the living meat. And yet, somehow, I was not very profoundly shocked. These were the men whom I had seen eviscerate the shark and toss it overboard, and shout with joy as they watched it devoured alive by its brethren. They had played a violent, cruel game with the things of life, and the things of life now played upon them the same violent, cruel game. As they that rise by the sword perish by the sword, just so did these two men who had lived cruelly die cruelly. “Oh, well,” was Mr. Pike’s comment, “we’ve saved two sacks of mighty good coal.” * * * * * Certainly our situation might be worse. We are cooking on the coal-stove and on the oil-burners. We have servants to cook and serve for us. And, most important of all, we are in possession of all the food on the _Elsinore_. Mr. Pike makes no mistake. Realizing that with our crowd we cannot rush the crowd at the other end of the ship, he accepts the siege, which, as he says, consists of the besieged holding all food supplies while the besiegers are on the imminent edge of famine. “Starve the dogs,” he growls. “Starve ’m until they crawl aft and lick our shoes. Maybe you think the custom of carrying the stores aft just happened. Only it didn’t. Before you and I were born it was long-established and it was established on brass tacks. They knew what they were about, the old cusses, when they put the grub in the lazarette.” Louis says there is not more than three days’ regular whack in the galley; that the barrel of hard-tack in the forecastle will quickly go; and that our chickens, which they stole last night from the top of the ’midship-house, are equivalent to no more than an additional day’s supply. In short, at the outside limit, we are convinced the men will be keen to talk surrender within the week. We are no longer sailing. In last night’s darkness we helplessly listened to the men loosing headsail-halyards and letting yards go down on the run. Under orders of Mr. Pike I shot blindly and many times into the dark, but without result, save that we heard the bullets of answering shots strike against the chart-house. So to-day we have not even a man at the wheel. The _Elsinore_ drifts idly on an idle sea, and we stand regular watches in the shelter of chart-house and jiggermast. Mr. Pike says it is the laziest time he has had on the whole voyage.