"Here's your friend, Mr. Cookee," said Stevens, stirring Duckling with the toe of his boot. "He's waitin' for you to know wot's to become of him." "Him a berry good genelman," returned the cook, pulling off his cap with drunken gravity, and making a reeling bow to the body. "Me love dis genelman like my own son. Nebber knew tenderer-hearted man. Him gib me a nice blow here," holding his clenched fist to his jaw, "and anoder one here," clapping his hand to his back. Then, after a pause, he kicked the dying or dead man savagely in the head, yelling in a hideous falsetto, "Oh, I'll skin um alive! Oh, I'll pull his eyes out and make um swaller dem! He kick an' strike honest English cook! Oh, my golly! I'll cut off his foot! Gib me a knife, sar," looking around him with a wandering, gleaming eye. "Gib me a knife, I say, an' you see what I do!" One of the ruffians actually gave him a knife. I grasped the carpenter's arm. "Mr. Stevens," I exclaimed in his ear, "you'll not allow this! For God's sake, don't let this drunken cannibal disgrace our manhood by such brutal deeds before us! Living or dead, better fling the body overboard! Don't let him be tortured if living; and if dead, is not your revenge complete?" The carpenter made no answer, and sick with horror and disgust I was turning away, feeling powerless to deal with these wretches, when, the cook already kneeling and baring his arm for I know not what bloody work, Stevens sprang forward and fetched him such a thump under the chin, that he rolled head over heels into the lee-scuppers. The men roared with laughter. "Now then, overboard with this thing!" the carpenter shouted; "and if cookee wants more wengeance, fling him overboard arter him!" They seized Duckling as they had seized Coxon, and slung him overboard, just as they had slung the other. Some of them ran to the cook, and it was impossible to judge whether they were in earnest or not when they shrieked out, "Overboard with him, too! We can't separate the friends!" The cook at all events believed they meant no joke, for uttering a prolonged yell of terror, he wriggled with incredible activity out of their hands, and rushed forward like a steam-engine. They did not offer to pursue him; and, ill with these scenes of horror, I called to the carpenter and asked him to step on the poop whilst I went into the cuddy. "What to do there?" he inquired suspiciously. "To get something to eat. I have had nothing all day but two of the ship's bad biscuits." "Right," he said. "But, before I go, I'll tell you what's agreed among us. You're to take charge, and sarve with me and the bo'sun, turn and turn about on deck. That's agreeable, ain't it?" "Quite." "You're to do all the piloting of the ship, and navigate us to where the ship's company agrees upon." "I understand."