tell the cook to keep the soup back for an
hour."

"Soup? What soup?" he cried.

"Soup the cook's getting ready; Dumlow, go and get the biscuit-bag."

Jarette uttered a grunt, and there was a buzz of voices from below whose
tones plainly enough told of eager expectation, for they had been pretty
well starved since they had been shut down in the cabin.

Dumlow fetched the bag of biscuits, and with the men watching me I
prepared to go forward.

"Better let me do it, sir," growled Bob Hampton; "they may shoot."

"No, I don't think they will," I said quietly, as I looked aft to see
that my friends were, like the men hard by, watching me, and Barney
Blane right aft at the wheel. "Look here, below there," I said, trying
to keep my voice steady, for I felt horribly nervous, and could not help
thinking that if anything went wrong the mutineers would visit what had
been done on me.

"Look here, you, I'm going to serve out biscuits and soup. I shall hand
the tins down through the hole in the hatch. Fair play. No pistols
now."

"Let's have the soup, and don't chatter, boy," said Jarette, sharply,
and just then the cook came out smiling with a bucket nearly full of
steaming, fragrant-smelling soup, and the man who had been by the wheel
came behind him carrying a dozen tin mugs whose handles were strung on a
piece of rope.

"Here we are!" I said, strung up now to get the miserable business over
as quickly as I could, and just then the cook set the bucket down on the
deck, and began to stir it with a big iron ladle.

"Lot o' preserved vegetables and herbs and all in it, sir," he
exclaimed. "If I don't stir they'll go to the bottom."

"Oh, keep stirring!" I said huskily, as I took a tin, made Dumlow lay
some biscuits on the wooden boarding over the hatch, and I held the tin
ready while the cook filled it from the ladle.

The next minute, with my hand trembling, I handed the first tin and a
biscuit down, for both to be snatched from me. Then I shivered and felt
that all was over, for a familiar voice said--

"Taste that, one of you, and see if it's all right."

"Oh, that's all right! Mister Jarette. Plenty o' salt, pepper, and
dried herbs in it," said the cook.

Then there was a peculiar noise below, slightly suggestive of pigs, and
a voice said--

"Jolly hot, but--suss!--good--capital!"

"Here, look sharp, skipper, make haste! Here, I'm first," and a dozen
other expressions greeted my ear, as, gaining