“Laws, no!” said the cook. “Fats 'em up.” He went inside, and reappeared with a pan full of scraps of meat and crusts of bread.
“Oh, I say!” cried Dunham. “Haven't you got some grain, you know, of some sort; some seeds, don't you know?”
“They will like this,” said Lydia, while the cook stared in perplexity. She took the pan, and opening the little door of the coop flung the provision inside. But the fowls were either too depressed in spirit to eat anything, or they were not hungry; they remained in their corner, and merely fell silent, as if a new suspicion had been roused in their unhappy breasts.
“Dey'll come, to it,” observed the cook.
Dunham felt far from content, and regarded the poultry with silent disappointment. “Are you fond of pets?” he asked, after a while.
“Yes, I used to have pet chickens when I was a little thing.”
“You ought to adopt one of these,” suggested Dunham. “That white one is a pretty creature.”
“Yes,” said Lydia. “He looks as if he were Leghorn. Leghorn breed,” she added, in reply to Dunham's look of inquiry. “He's a beauty.”
“Let me get him out for you a moment!” cried the young man, in his amiable zeal. Before Lydia could protest, or the cook interfere, he had opened the coop-door and plunged his arm into the tumult which his manoeuvre created within. He secured the cockerel, and drawing it forth was about to offer it to Lydia, when in its struggles to escape it drove one of its spurs into his hand. Dunham suddenly released it; and then ensued a wild chase for its recapture, up and down the ship, in which it had every advantage of the young man. At last it sprang upon the rail; he put out his hand to seize it, when it rose with a desperate screech, and flew far out over the sea. They watched the suicide till it sank exhausted into a distant white-cap.
“Dat's gone,” said the cook, philosophically. Dunham looked round. Half the ship's company, alarmed by his steeple-chase over the deck, were there, silently agrin.