r-logged pipe fast to
the iron. He didn't mean it to get adrift, either, for he took
his turns carefully, and hove them taut and then rode them, so
that they couldn't slip, and made the end fast with two
half-hitches round the iron, and hitched it back on itself. Then
he tried it with his hands, and looked up and down the deck
furtively, and then quietly dropped the pipe and iron over the
rail, so that I didn't even hear the splash. If anybody was
playing tricks on board, they weren't meant for the cook.

I asked some questions about Jack Benton, and one of the men told
me that he was off his feed, and hardly ate anything, and
swallowed all the coffee he could lay his hands on, and had used
up all his own tobacco and had begun on what his brother had
left.

"The doctor says it ain't so, sir," said the man, looking at me
shyly, as if he didn't expect to be believed; "the doctor says
there's as much eaten from breakfast to breakfast as there was
before Jim fell overboard, though there's a mouth less and
another that eats nothing. I says it's the cabin-boy that gets
it. He's bu'sting."

I told him that if the cabin-boy ate more than his share, he must
work more than his share, so as to balance things. But the man
laughed queerly, and looked at me again.

"I only said that, sir, just like that. We all know it ain't so."

"Well, how is it?"

"How is it?" asked the man, half-angry all at once. "I don't know
how it is, but there's a hand on board that's getting his whack
along with us as regular as the bells."

"Does he use tobacco?" I asked, meaning to laugh it out of him,
but as I spoke I remembered the water-logged pipe.

"I guess he's using his own still," the man answered, in a queer,
low voice. "Perhaps he'll take some one else's when his is all
gone."

It was about nine o'clock in the morning, I remember, for just
then the captain called to me to stand by the chronometer while
he took his fore observation. Captain Hackstaff wasn't one of
those old skippers who do everything themselves with a pocket
watch, and keep the key of the chronometer in their waistcoat
pocket, and won't tell the mate how far the dead reckoning is
out. He was rather the other way, and I was glad of it, for he
generally let me work the sights he took, and just ran his eye
over my figures afterwards. I am bound to say his eye was pretty
good, for he would pick out a mistake in a logarithm, or tell me
that I had worked the "Equation of