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Pursuing them was out of the question in his then condition, so he grasped his way to the house and told Johnson of his mishap, who bad-worded him severely, winding up by saying, “I suppose I shall have to go an’ get it. I never saw such a fool in my life.” A common enough expression, but one very rarely justified.

Away went Johnson, presently returning with the food, but grumbling horribly. He made haste to eat some of the pork and pea-soup, but Frank, although savagely hungry, was fain to stay his appetite with a biscuit; that pork was too much for his sight, to say nothing of his stomach.

As soon as Johnson had finished he pitched his plate into a corner, and his knife and spoon (he had used no fork) into his bunk, and lighting his pipe began to put on his oilskins and sea-boots, grimly warning Frank that he had better do the same. Frank obeyed, not without a sense of its uselessness, as he was already fairly drenched, but in the topsy-turvy world into which he had been plunged he did not feel at all sure that it was not the right thing to put waterproof clothes over wet ones. He had hardly dressed himself thus and begun to realise how utterly helpless and clumsy he felt, much worse than he had before, when he heard a shout, “Eight bells! all hands shorten sail.”