For, as a rule, civilised men, ruffians though they may be, do not feed those they are going to kill.

They kill and have done with it.
The same man brought me coffee and bread and meat, and stood watching me again with his back to the porthole while I ate.
It was, as I had thought, Torode himself, and I would have given all I possessed--which indeed was not overmuch--to know what was passing concerning me in that great black head of his.

But I did not ask him, for I should not have expected him to tell me.

I just ate and drank every scrap of what he brought me, with as cheerful an air as I could compass, and thanked him politely when I had done..