"He could only have stowed himself down there when we were loading in the docks, and it is now over three days since we cleared out and started down the river." "Humph!" growled Captain Gillespie, "the confounded skulker has only brought it on himself, and sarve him right, too." "Shame!" groaned one of the men, a murmur of reproach running round amongst the rest, in sympathy with this expression of opinion against such an inhuman speech, making the captain look up and cock his ears and sniff with his long nose, trying to find out who had dared to call him to account.

But, of course, he was unable to do so; and, after glaring at those near as if he could have "eaten them without salt," as the saying goes, he bent his eyes down again on Mr Mackay and the boatswain.

These were trying to resuscitate the unfortunate stowaway in a somewhat more humane way than the captain had suggested; for, while the mate opened his collar and shirt and lifted his head on his knee, Tim Rooney sprinkled his face smartly with water from the bucket that had been dipped over the side and filled.
At first, Tim's efforts were unsuccessful, causing Captain Gillespie to snort with impatience at his delicate mode of treatment; but, the third or fourth dash of the cold water at last restored the poor fellow to consciousness, his eyelids quivering and then opening, while he drew a deep long breath like a sigh.
He didn't know a bit, though, where he was, his eyes staring out from their sockets, which had sunk deep into his head, as if he were looking through us and beyond us to something else--instead of at us close beside him.
In a moment, however, recollection came back to him and he tried to raise himself up, only to fall back on Mr Mackay's supporting knee; and, then, he called out piteously what had probably been his cry for hours previously as he lay cramped up in the darkness of the forepeak: "Hey, let Oi out, measter, and Oi'll never do it no more! Oi be clemmed to da-eth, measter, and th' rats and varmint be a-gnawing on me cruel! Let Oi out, measter, Oi be dying here in the dark--let Oi out, for Gawd's sake!" "It is as I told you," said Mr Mackay looking up at the captain; "he is starving.

See, one of you, if the cook's got anything ready in his galley." "Begorra, it wor pay-soup day to-day," cried Tim Rooney getting up to obey the order; "an' Ching Wang bulled it so plentiful wid wather that the men toorned oop their noses at it, an' most of it wor lift in the coppers." "The very thing for one in this poor chap's condition," replied Mr Mackay eagerly.

"Go and bring a pannikin of it at once." Captain Gillespie sniffed and snorted more than ever of being baulked for the present in his amiable intention of giving the stowaway a bit of his mind, and, possibly, something else in addition.
He saw, though, that his unwelcome passenger was too far gone to be spoken to as yet; and so, perforce, he had to delay calling him to account for his intrusion, putting the reckoning off until a more convenient season.
"Ah, well, Mackay," said he, on Tim Rooney's return presently with a pannikin of pea-soup and a large iron spoon, with which he proceeded to ladle some into the starving creature's mouth, which was ravenously opened, as were his eyes, too, distended with eager famine craving as he smelt the food--"you see to bringing the beggar round as well as you can, and I'll talk to him bye and bye." So saying, Captain Gillespie returned to his former place on the poop, and contented himself for the moment with rating the helmsman for letting the ship yaw on a big wave catching her athwart the bows and making her fall off; while the first mate and Tim Rooney continued their good Samaritan work in gently plying the poor creature, who had just been rescued from death's door, with spoonful after spoonful of the tepid soup.