The mess was shoved through the rail and poked at by the skipper with a pen-knife; he even jobbed a piece of it out and put it into his mouth. I watched for a grimace, but he made none. He handed the tin dish as he had the biscuit to Duckling, who looked at it closely and put it on the deck.
The Dutchman, looking as a man would who is conscious of having discharged a most important duty, hustled back among the others, and the man with the treacle came out.
"This, sir, is what the steward's givin' us for molasses," said he, looking into the pannikin.
The captain made no answer.
"And though his senses are agin him, he goes on a callin' of it molasses."
Another pause.
"But to my way of thinkin' it ain't no more molasses than it's oysters. It's biled black-beetles, that's what I call it, and you want a toothpick as strong as a marlin-spike to get the shells out o' your teeth arter a meal of it."
"Hand it up," said the captain, from whom every moment I was expecting an explosion of temper. He did not offer to taste the stuff, but inspected it with apparent attention, and tilted the vessel first this way and then that, that the treacle might run.
"Here's your molasses," said he, handing down the pannikin. "What else is there?"