"It makes me picture to myself your future," Salvé continued, placidly,
"how it will be with you when I come out again. You will be like that
lobscouse, my friend. Had that never occurred to you?"

The mulatto went on eating, but grew absent. His nature, as before
observed, was not a courageous one, and it was obvious that his food at
last began to stick in his throat.

"It is much the same as if you were sitting there and feeding on
yourself," said Salvé, after a longer pause, during which he had watched
the other's lengthening countenance. "That's just what it will be, my
dear friend, unless--"

"Unless--?" repeated the mulatto, pricking up his ears.

"Unless you take good care to pass your dinner in here to me every day
from this time. There are only five days more, and I have fasted for
nine, while you have been feeding away, so you are getting off cheaply
enough. If the boatswain sees you passing in food to me, you'll be
punished, so you will have to be cautious, and hold up the plate
yourself before the opening, that he may think you are eating right in
my face."

These were humiliating terms; and the mulatto made no immediate reply.
He merely sat with his woolly head bent down in a thoughtful attitude.
But the next day he stationed his broad person with the plate in his
hand up in front of the opening, and Salvé mercilessly took every morsel
there was on it.

It was a matter of the last importance to him not to be reduced in