Tom Spink groaned protest when I told Louis to
take them below and give them blankets.
I made the sleep-sign to them, and they nodded gratefully, hesitated,
then pointed to their mouths and rubbed their stomachs.
"Drowned men do not eat," I laughed to Tom Spink. "Go down and watch
them. Feed them up, Louis, all they want. It's a good sign of short
rations for'ard."
At the end of half an hour Tom Spink was back.
"Well, did they eat?" I challenged him.
But he was unconvinced. The very quantity they had eaten was a
suspicious thing, and, further, he had heard of a kind of ghost that
devoured dead bodies in graveyards. Therefore, he concluded, mere
non-eating was no test for a ghost.
The third event of moment occurred this morning at seven o'clock.
The mutineers called for a truce; and when Nosey Murphy, the Maltese
Cockney, and the inevitable Charles Davis stood beneath me on the
main deck, their faces showed lean and drawn. Famine had been my
great ally. And in truth, with Margaret beside me in that high place
of the break of the poop, as I looked down on the hungry wretches I
felt very strong.
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