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what’s that? What’s that thou sayest? Nay, fellow, th’ art mad? Thou know’st not to whom thou speakest.”

“Fool! Knave! Scoundrel! Swine!” they yelled. “Oh, such a beating as thy fat carcase will get. Hear you not the uproar? Think you to cozzen us?”

With that they seized him, two by the head and two by the feet, and dragged him to the ladder. They threw a rope about him and knotted it fast and tossed the ends to men at the hatch above, who hauled him, squealing and kicking like an old hog, up on deck. To the cabin they dragged him, with all the men shrieking curses at him and pelting him with chunks of fish, and in the cabin they stood him before the table where the Old One and Harry Malcolm sat, and very angry were they all.

“Dog of a cook,” said the Old One, “for a relish to conclude our meal, we shall see thee eat of this fish that the boy hath brought us.’’ And he thrust before the cook a great dish. ‘‘Eat it, every shred, bones and all,” said he, ‘‘or I'll have thee butchered and boiled in place of it.”

"Why, now,” said the cook, somewhat sobered by rough handling and a trifle perplexed, but for all that still well pleased with himself, ‘‘as for the bones, they are liable to scrape a man’s throat going down. I am reluctant to eat bones. But the meat is good. I rejoice to partake of it, for so diligently have I laboured to prepare it that I have denied myself, yea, though I hungered greatly.”

“Eat,” said the Old One and widely he grinned.

Looking suspiciously about him, for there was something in their manner that he failed to understand, the