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“Oh ho, ha ha, he he!” gasped the nigger, “geess you’re a new chum, berry green ain’t it. Neb’ mine, hold out yer pots,” and Frank, doing so, saw to his amazement a modicum of tea ladled out into them like soup, from a big saucepan.

“Now take dat away,” said the cook, “an’ come back ’gen, I’ve got some scouse for ye; feed yer well fus start off; letcher down easy like, he he!”

Frank’s disgust and chagrin were too great for words, but he had already learned one lesson, not to talk back, even to a loathsome negro cook who looked as if made of dirt, so he hurried off to his new home, and putting the pots on the deck, in the absence of a table, came back and fetched a tin pan of what looked like very badly made Irish stew. This he carried into the house, and then sat down on his sea-chest and looked blankly at his shipmates.

The two seniors said not a word, but producing tin plates and spoons, helped themselves to a goodly portion of “scouse” and a biscuit out of a grimy box (the biscuit looked, Frank thought, like those he used to give the dog at home), and began to eat at a great rate and in hoggish fashion. The other new-comer looked on helplessly as if unable to grasp the meaning of things, and Frank wondered if it was not some horrid dream from which he would presently awake. He was suddenly and rudely roused by the elder of the two seniors rapping him over the knuckles with his spoon and saying, “Now then, mummy’s darlin’, wade in and get some supper; you’ll get no more till seven bells to-morrow, and besides, it’s bad cattin’ on an empty stumjack.”