“Were you not the third in line when we began to serve breakfast?”
“If I had been you wouldn’t see me here now, because I’d be workin’ my jaws over the scanty allowance.”
“There is nothing scanty about it,” Simon cried, indignantly. “You are receiving the same amount of food as does any member of our crew.”
“Well, I’m not grumbling except you are trying to cheat me out of my portion,” the man said, half apologetically, and without further ado I handed him a pannikin, for we carried each man’s allowance in a separate dish, to the end that the stronger might not take advantage of the weaker, saying to myself as I did so:
“If that fellow has been served, as I fancy, we shall come out short before all are fed.”
A moment later it appeared that I had wronged the man, for nineteen pannikins had been passed into the brig, which was exactly the number necessary if each prisoner was to receive one.
Even with this proof I felt puzzled, for it surely seemed as if one man had gotten a double allowance, and, without really intending to do so, I counted the prisoners as they were squatting here or there busily engaged with the meal.
There were but eighteen.
Again I counted, arriving at the same conclusion.
It did not seem possible one man alone could have escaped, for if such an opportunity had presented itself, why did not some of the others take advantage of it? And yet where was this nineteenth prisoner?