th water from the bucket that
had been dipped over the side and filled.

At first, Tim's efforts were unsuccessful, causing Captain Gillespie to
snort with impatience at his delicate mode of treatment; but, the third
or fourth dash of the cold water at last restored the poor fellow to
consciousness, his eyelids quivering and then opening, while he drew a
deep long breath like a sigh.

He didn't know a bit, though, where he was, his eyes staring out from
their sockets, which had sunk deep into his head, as if he were looking
through us and beyond us to something else--instead of at us close
beside him.

In a moment, however, recollection came back to him and he tried to
raise himself up, only to fall back on Mr Mackay's supporting knee;
and, then, he called out piteously what had probably been his cry for
hours previously as he lay cramped up in the darkness of the forepeak:

"Hey, let Oi out, measter, and Oi'll never do it no more! Oi be clemmed
to da-eth, measter, and th' rats and varmint be a-gnawing on me cruel!
Let Oi out, measter, Oi be dying here in the dark--let Oi out, for
Gawd's sake!"

"It is as I told you," said Mr Mackay looking up at the captain; "he is
starving. See, one of you, if the cook's got anything ready in his
galley."

"Begorra, it wor pay-soup day to-day," cried Tim Rooney getting up to
obey the order; "an' Ching Wang bulled it so plentiful wid wather that
the men toorned oop their noses at it, an' most of it wor lift in the
coppers."

"The very thing for one in this poor chap's condition," replied Mr
Mackay eagerly. "Go and bring a pannikin of it at once."

Captain Gillespie sniffed and snorted more than ever of being baulked
for the present in his amiable intention of giving the stowaway a bit of
his mind, and, possibly, something else in addition.

He saw, though, that his unwelcome passenger was too far gone to be
spoken to as yet; and so, perforce, he had to delay calling him to
account for his intrusion, putting the reckoning off until a more
convenient season.

"Ah, well, Mackay," said he, on Tim Rooney's return presently with a
pannikin of pea-soup and a large iron spoon, with which he proceeded to
ladle some into the starving creature's mouth, which was ravenously
opened, as were his eyes, too, distended with eager famine craving as he
smelt the food--"you see to bringing the beggar round as well as you
can, and I'll talk to him bye and bye."

So saying, Captain Gillesp