“Better let me do it, sir,” growled Bob Hampton; “they may shoot.”
“No, I don’t think they will,” I said quietly, as I looked aft to see that my friends were, like the men hard by, watching me, and Barney Blane right aft at the wheel. “Look here, below there,” I said, trying to keep my voice steady, for I felt horribly nervous, and could not help thinking that if anything went wrong the mutineers would visit what had been done on me.
“Look here, you, I’m going to serve out biscuits and soup. I shall hand the tins down through the hole in the hatch. Fair play. No pistols now.”
“Let’s have the soup, and don’t chatter, boy,” said Jarette, sharply, and just then the cook came out smiling with a bucket nearly full of steaming, fragrant-smelling soup, and the man who had been by the wheel came behind him carrying a dozen tin mugs whose handles were strung on a piece of rope.
“Here we are!” I said, strung up now to get the miserable business over as quickly as I could, and just then the cook set the bucket down on the deck, and began to stir it with a big iron ladle.
“Lot o’ preserved vegetables and herbs and all in it, sir,” he exclaimed. “If I don’t stir they’ll go to the bottom.”
“Oh, keep stirring!” I said huskily, as I took a tin, made Dumlow lay some biscuits on the wooden boarding over the hatch, and I held the tin ready while the cook filled it from the ladle.
The next minute, with my hand trembling, I handed the first tin and a biscuit down, for both to be snatched from me. Then I shivered and felt that all was over, for a familiar voice said—
“Taste that, one of you, and see if it’s all right.”
“Oh, that’s all right! Mister Jarette. Plenty o’ salt, pepper, and dried herbs in it,” said the cook.