small
appetite.

'Can I bring you anything more, Sir?' Charlie asked.

'No,' the skipper replied, 'and don't you come bothering for these
things until after two o'clock.'

That order was given so that Charlie should not return until he had
removed all traces of his private provisions.

Glad to have finished for a time with the skipper, Charlie, with the aid
of the ship's boy, carried the men's food to the foc's'le. There was no
mock-turtle soup for them, but simply tinned meat, boiled and floating
in brown liquid.

The crew of the _Sparrow-hawk_ were a brutal, low-minded set of men, and
their conversation sickened Charlie even more than the discomfort of his
life; so, after swallowing a few mouthfuls of the food, he went on deck,
and, going aft, sat down on a coil of rope to think.

When he had been there about ten minutes Ping Wang joined him.

'This is the first time you have been to sea on a trawler,' the Chinaman
declared as he sat down beside him.

'How do you know?' Charlie asked, astounded to find that Ping Wang could
speak excellent English.

'I could see that you were surprised at the way in which the men eat and
talked. If you had known that they behaved in that manner, you would not
have come to sea.'

'That is very likely,' Charlie admitted.

'Why have you come?' Ping Wang inquired.

'One must do something for a living.'

'You could have got a better job ashore. I am certain of that. You have
come to sea for fun.'

'If I had, I fancy that I should be disappointed.'

'The skipper has been bullying you, I suppose. He bullies every one.'

'Yes, he has been bullying me, but I will let him know very soon that I
won't stand much of it.'

'I advise you not to quarrel with him. I should not have come aboard
this trip had I known that he was coming. He told us last voyage that
that was his last trip.'

'Where did he expect to be? In jail?'

'No,' the Chinaman answered, smiling; 'he said that he was going to
retire. He was going to sell the trawler to some rich old fellow who
knows nothing about such things. The mate told me that the skipper hopes
to get half as much again as the trawler was worth. Last trip he cut
down expenses, and he is doing the same again now, so that the gentleman
who is buying her will think the cost of running a trawler is less than
it is. We are a hand short this trip.'

'Is the trawler a sound boat?'

'This is the only one I have ever been on, but the fellows on t