'Tidewell!' cried Thoms angrily and anxiously.
And still there was no answer but a groan from old Brooks.
'Wot did I tell you?' he demanded. 'I seed it in 'is eye.'
They searched the Battle-Axe from stem to stern; they overhauled the sails in the sail-locker; they hunted with a lantern in the fore-peak; they even went aloft to the fore- and main-tops, where once or twice some one who sought for coolness where no coolness could be found went up into what they jocosely called the 'attic.' But Ned had lost the number of his mess.
'More clothes for sale,' said the melancholy crew, as they looked at each other suspiciously. ''Oo'll be the next?'
Brooks declared to the other fo'c'sleman that the next would be Wat Crampe or Taffy, as they called the Welshman.
'There's an awful 'orrid look of the deep, dark knowledge o' death in their faces,' declared old Brooks. 'They thinks of the peace of it and the quiet, and smiles secret!'
Next morning Watchett hailed the Star and told the latest dreadful news. And at the end he added, in a truly pathetic roar: 'Send me them tins o' marmalade aboard. And the butter.'
And when Mrs. Ryder superintended the steward's work getting these stores out of the lazarette, she smiled very strangely. She said to her husband—
'If he loses another hand or two the Battle-Axe will be no easy ship to work, Will.'