Page:Wren--The young stagers.djvu/157



" how you Cast Lots, Bo'sun?" remarked the President, turning to the Vice who was scanning the weary horizon for a sail. (They were shipwrecked mariners on a raft in mid-ocean, and their provisions were reduced to three chocolates in silver paper, a lunch biscuit and a slice of apple rapidly losing its healthy pallor in favour of an unwholesome brownness.)

"I thuppothe you cast lots of things overboard," was the sensible reply. "But there's nothing to cast," he added, in the weak, faint, hopeless voice proper to one who has suffered the last extremes of hunger and thirst for thirty days (including thirty nights).

"Don't be a Fat-head, Bo'sun," said the Captain, with some asperity. "When you Cast Lots, you don't cast lots of something, you just Cast Lots." 139