Poker’s bosom friend, Dumps, was so named because he had the sulkiest expression of countenance that ever fell to the lot of a dog.  Hopelessly incurable melancholy seemed to have taken possession of his mind, for he never by any chance smiled—­and dogs do smile, you know, just as evidently as human beings do, although not exactly with their mouths.  Dumps never romped either, being old, but he sat and allowed his friend Poker to romp round him with a sort of sulky satisfaction, as if he experienced the greatest enjoyment his nature was capable of in witnessing the antics of his youthful companion—­for Poker was young.  The prevailing colour of Dumps’s shaggy hide was a dirty brown, with black spots, two of which had fixed themselves rather awkwardly round his eyes, like a pair of spectacles.  Dumps, also, was a thief, and, indeed, so were all his brethren.  Dumps and Poker were both of them larger and stronger, and in every way better, than their comrades; and they afterwards were the sturdy, steady, unflinching leaders of the team during many a toilsome journey over the frozen sea.

One magnificent afternoon, a few days after the escape of the Dolphin just related, Dumps and Poker lay side by side in the lee-scuppers, calmly sleeping off the effects of a surfeit produced by the eating of a large piece of pork, for which the cook had searched in vain for three-quarters of an hour, and of which he at last found the bare bone sticking in the hole of the larboard pump.

“Bad luck to them dogs,” exclaimed David Mizzle, stroking his chin as he surveyed the bone.  “If I could only find out, now, which of ye it was, I’d have ye slaughtered right off, and cooked for the mess, I would.”

“It was Dumps as did it, I’ll bet you a month’s pay,” said Peter Grim, as he sat on the end of the windlass refilling his pipe, which he had just smoked out.

“Not a bit of it,” remarked Amos Parr, who was squatted on the deck busily engaged in constructing a rope mat, while several of the men sat round him engaged in mending sails, or stitching canvas slippers, etc.—­“not a bit of it, Grim; Dumps is too honest by half to do sich a thing.  ’Twas Poker as did it, I can see by the roll of his eye below the skin.  The blackguard’s only shammin’ sleep.”

On hearing his name mentioned, Poker gently opened his right eye, but did not move.  Dumps, on the contrary, lay as if he heard not the base aspersion on his character.

“What’ll ye bet it was Dumps as did it?” cried Davie Summers, who passed at the moment with a dish of some sort of edible towards the galley or cooking-house on deck.

“I’ll bet you over the ’ead, I will, if you don’t mind your business,” said Mivins.

“You’d better not,” retorted Davie with a grin.  “It’s as much as your situation’s worth to lay a finger on me.”

“That’s it, youngster, give it ’im,” cried several of the men, while the boy confronted his superior, taking good care, however, to keep the fore-mast between them.