"Catch it and smell it for yourself," shouted a seaman, plunging his hand into the mess-kid and hurling a lump of pork through the hatch. The sailors heard the hurried steps of Mr. Chips as he went aft. "He'll be telling the old man," said Black Sam; "let's go on deck and have it out, lads. I'll do the talking part, with your good leave. We don't want no language. Civility's a trump card in these here traverses. We all knows what we mean to get, and I'll say it for ye." He led the way, his shipmates followed; they gained the forecastle and stood in a group gazing at the after part of the ship. The vessel was the _Rose_, from Liverpool to an East African port. She was an old-fashioned, composite ship, but her lines were those of a yacht's, and there were few vessels then afloat which could look at her on a bowline. Her yards were immensely square, and she carried swinging booms and main-skysail-mast, and her burthen was between six and seven hundred tons. Such a ship as this demanded eighteen of a crew at least, not to mention master, mates, and "idlers." Instead of eighteen the _Rose_ had sailed with ten men in the forecastle, and a cook in the galley, and the others were a carpenter, who acted as second-mate, an Only Mate, and the captain. Of the slender crew, two had been swept overboard in a gale of wind. They were foreigners, and the English Jacks did not lament their shipmates' end, but on the contrary grinned fiendishly when it was discovered that the foreigners were gone, and they hideously wished that all Dutchmen who signed articles for the red ensign of England would go and fall overboard as those two foreigners had, and as promptly, too, so that nobody concerned might be kept waiting. During the gale in which the two Dutchmen had perished, the ship had been so strained as to oblige the hands to serve the pumps every four hours. Undermanned, leaky, the provisions rotten! There must be a limit to patience and endurance, even though the sufferer be a sailor. The seven seamen lumped together on the forecastle of the _Rose_ stood staring aft. The cook, a pale man, lounged in his galley door, half in and half out, and his face wore an expression of sour expectation. The carpenter, as I may call him, was talking to the captain, and the Only Mate was slowly rising through the companion hatch as the body of seamen stood staring. [Illustration: "IS THIS FOOD FOR A MAN?"] The captain, whose name was Jones, was a tall, lean, gaunt man, his face of the colour of sulphur, his appearance decidedly Yankee, though he happened to belong to Limehouse. He wore square-toed boots, a cloak that might have been taken from the shoulders of a stage bandit, and a sugar-loafed hat. The hair on his face consisted of a beard that fell from under his chin like a goat's, and his eyes were black, brilliant, and restless.