and a sight of the
_Silver Teal_."

"Same here, sir. My word, I'm beginning to feel like wishing we had got
the Camel here, though he would be no good without the galley and his
tools. Not a bad chap to have, though, Mr Poole, if we was to land in
a sort of Robinson Crusoe island. There's worse messmates at a time
like that than a chap as can knock up decent wittles out of nothing;
make a good pot of soup out of a flannel-shirt and an old shoe, and
roast meat out of them knobs and things like cork-blocks as you find
growing on trees. Some of them cookie chaps too, like the Camel, are
precious keen about the nose, long-headed and knowing. Old Andy is an
out-and-out clever chap at picking out things as is good to eat. I had
a ramble with him once up country in Trinidad. He was a regular wunner
at finding out different kinds of plants. `Look 'ere,' he says, `if you
pull this up it's got a root something like a parsnep whose grandfather
had been a beet.' And then he showed me some more things creeping up
the trees like them flowers at home in the gardens, wonvuluses, as they
call them, only he called them yams, and he poked one out with his
stick, and yam it was--a great, big, black, thick, rooty thing, like a
big tater as had been stretched. Andy said as no fellow as had brains
in his head ought to starve out in a foreign land; and that's useful to
know, Mr Poole and Mr Burnett, sir. Come in handy if we have to do
the Robinson Crusoe for a spell.--Keep it up, young gents," he
whispered; "the lads like to hear us talk.--`That's all very fine,
Andy,' I says," he continued, aloud, "`but what about water? Whether
you are aboard your ship or whether you are in a strange land, you must
have plenty of water in your casks!' `Find a river,' he says. `But
suppose you can't,' says I. `Open your snickersee,' says he, `and dig a
hole right down till you come to it. And if there aren't none, then use
your eyes.' `Why, you can't drink your eyes,' I says, `and I'd rather
have sea-water any day than tears.' `Use them,' he says; `I didn't say
drink 'em. Look about. Why, in these 'ere foreign countries there's
prickly plants with long spikes to them to keep the wild beasts from
meddling with them, so as they shall be ready for human beings; and then
all you have got to do is to rub or singe the spikes off and they're
chock-full of water--juice, if you like to call it so--only it's got no
taste. Then there's plahnts with