“Don’t be so jolly particular; it’s quite dry.”

“Look here, Dick, are you going off your head?”

“I thought I was when the idea came, for it set me laughing so that I could not stop myself.”

“Come, tell me what it all means, or I shall go below to my berth. What is there in all this?”

“Poison, I tell you.”

“Yes, you told me before; but what does it mean?”

“You see that lump of pudding; well, there’s poison in it.”

“Dick Roberts, I’m hot and easily aggravated. If you go on like this I shall be as quarrelsome as you were this afternoon.”

“Well, there, it was all my idea that I had this afternoon. I got that lump of pudding from the cook, took it down to my berth, pulled out my knife, put the box on the side of the pudding, and cut out a piece exactly the size of the box.”

“Wh-a-a-t! You mean you cut a piece out of the box just the size of the pudding?”