'Is the rest of the pork to be like this?' said Jones, taking the dollop off the point of his knife, and seeming to weigh it in the palm of his gigantic, tar-stained hand.
'Go forward and finish your dinner, Jones, and leave me to get an observation,' said Captain Glew, with a very forbidding glance.
He applied his sextant once more to his eye, walking a little way aft.
The boatswain stood looking from him to the piece of pork, and from the piece of pork to him; then saying, 'There goes my dinner,' he jerked the pale, rather bluish lump over the side, and rolled forward.
CHAPTER IV. CAPTAIN MARY LIND.
Next day they broached a cask of beef for the forecastle. The meat proved fairly sweet, and that and a kidful of currant-dumplings kept the men quiet. But on the following day the bad pork was served out again. Captain Glew refused to hear the boatswain on the subject, and those of the men who could not swallow the meat made shift for a meal with pea-soup and ship's biscuit.
Not a word of this trouble, which Captain Glew must have known was charged with one of the deadliest of all ocean menaces, reached Mr. Vanderholt.