Staniford silently acquiesced in Dunham's reply that they found them
excellent. "But you don't mean to say," Dunham added, "that you're
going to give us beefsteak and all the vegetables of the season the
whole way over?"

"No," said the captain; "we shall put you on sea-fare soon enough. But
you'll like it. You don't want the same things at sea that you do on
shore; your appetite chops round into a different quarter altogether,
and you want salt beef; but you'll get it good. Your room's pretty
snug," he suggested.

"Oh, it's big enough," said Staniford, to whom he had turned as
perhaps more in authority than Dunham. "While we're well we only
sleep in it, and if we're seasick it doesn't matter where we are."

The captain knocked the ash from his cigar with the tip of his fat
little finger, and looked down. "I was in hopes I could have let you
had a room apiece, but I had another passenger jumped on me at the
last minute. I suppose you see what's the matter with Mr. Hicks?"
He looked up from one to another, and they replied with a glance of
perfect intelligence. "I don't generally talk my passengers over with
one another, but I thought I'd better speak to you about him. I found
him yesterday evening at my agents', with his father. He's just been
on a spree, a regular two weeks' tear, and the old gentleman didn't
know what to do with him, on shore, any longer. He thought he'd send
him to sea a voyage, and see what would come of it, and he plead hard
with me to take him. I didn't want to take him, but he worked away at
me till I couldn't say no. I argued in my own mind that he couldn't
get anything to drink on my ship, and that he'd behave himself well
enough as long as he was sober." The captain added ruefully, "He looks