At six, they came and told him dinner was ready. The announcement
aroused no enthusiasm within him, but he felt that there was some of that
two-pound-five to be worked off, and he held on to ropes and things and
went down. A pleasant odour of onions and hot ham, mingled with fried
fish and greens, greeted him at the bottom of the ladder; and then the
steward came up with an oily smile, and said:
"What can I get you, sir?"
"Get me out of this," was the feeble reply.
And they ran him up quick, and propped him up, over to leeward, and left
him.
For the next four days he lived a simple and blameless life on thin
captain's biscuits (I mean that the biscuits were thin, not the captain)
and soda-water; but, towards Saturday, he got uppish, and went in for
weak tea and dry toast, and on Monday he was gorging himself on chicken
broth. He left the ship on Tuesday, and as it steamed away from the
landing-stage he gazed after it regretfully.
"There she goes," he said, "there she goes, with two pounds' worth of
food on board that belongs to me, and that I haven't had."
He said that if they had given him another day he thought he could have
put it straight.
So I set my face against the sea trip. Not, as I explained, upon my own
account. I was never queer. But I was afraid for George.
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