CHAPTER III.
Squaring the Yards.
By degrees the boys became accustomed to their new situation, and began to feel much more contented.

The only thing that troubled them was the food they received.

It consisted, for the most part, of salt pork and beef, and hard crackers, with now and then a little flour and dried apples.

Simpson, who had been in the navy nearly all his life, and had become well acquainted with its rules and regulations, asserted that they did not receive half their allowance, and promised that, if he could detect the paymaster's steward in the act of cheating them, he would pay him back in his own coin.

Now Blinks, for that was the steward's name, was a notorious cheat; he never gave the men their full rations.