ne bit of meat apiece--no more."

One sailor bore a lantern, for the only light afforded outside of that
was from the grated hatch above. Amid the half obscurity Ralph saw a
jumble of swart, brutish faces and wildly gleaming eyes, and heard a
babel of guttural sounds suggestive of a savage Bedlam where violence
was restrained only by fear.

Up and down the rows of naked forms they passed, dealing to each one a
ration of bread and meat, scanty and coarse enough, yet sufficient to
sustain life. Then half a pint of water was served out to each.

Here the struggle to keep order was fiercest. The strong would attempt
to deprive the weak of their share, and Bludson's whip was kept
constantly going.

Once a brawny negro made a strong effort to seize the bucket,
regardless of the cowhide, when Long Tom felled him at a blow with his
pistol butt, then cocking the weapon, glanced sternly around at the
circle of angry faces by which they were surrounded.

The negroes would have torn them in pieces had they dared, for the want
of water was already rendering them desperate in that fetid hole.

Ralph returned to the deck pale, nauseated, and sick at heart. The
captain noticed this and it angered him, as did nearly everything which
the boy now did.

"Hark ye!" he growled. "D'ye think you'd like to spend all your time
down there?"

"I would rather be dead," said Ralph half angrily, for his whole being
rebelled against the atrocity of which he was being made, perforce, one
of the perpetrators.

"Would, eh?" The captain eyed him with leering malevolence. "You'll
mind your eye then while you're on this craft, and you'll obey orders,
without a word, or--down you go among those demons for punishment. Go
to my room and bring up my small glass--the double one. Stay--while
you're there make up the berth and tidy things up a bit. Lively now!"

Ralph went below burning with a sense of futile rage. It was useless
to rebel, however, for on a ship a boy is the most helpless of
creatures.

As he moodily arranged things in the captain's stateroom, wondering for
the hundreth time why Gary should appear to wish to persecute him after
having been so courteous at Savannah, Ralph's eye fell on an open
letter lying on the floor before the half open door of a small iron
safe. Evidently Gary, in his haste or excitement over the approach of
the warship, had left the safe in this condition. The letter had
probably fallen there unnotic