The third thing that Alice knew upon awakening was that she was lying on an extremely uncomfortable camp-bed with a horsehair blanket placed over her. The second thing Alice knew was that she was surrounded by a jumbling of tumbling objects and items. And the first thing she knew was that an old and rather untidy badger was leaning over her with a cup of tea in his hand, from which he was trying to make her drink. Alice did drink, because she felt quite weak from her travels, but the tea tasted dark and she told the old badger so. "I'm afraid the tea is dark," the badger agreed, "but that's only because it's got no milk in it. You see, I'm desperately short of money at the present moment, and I was trying to invent a free bottle of milk, but my computermites couldn't work out the solution to that little problem, I'm afraid: it made them go into a dreadful tizzy. Still, perhaps if I lighten your tea with a little fish juice…" The badger proceeded then to squeeze a live goldfish over Alice's cup of tea.

This made Alice spring to her feet. "Please don't harm that poor fish!" she called out.

"But he likes flavouring tea," the badger answered, waving the fish under Alice's nose. "This is a Japanese tea-flavouring fish."

Alice politely declined the taking of fish juice and then asked of the badger, "Are you Captain Ramshackle, by any chance?"

"I am indeed by chance the one and only Captain of Ramshackle," the badger agreed, bowing at the waist. As he bowed a cloud of talcum powder rose upwards from his thick, black-and-white-streaked hair. "And what is your name?"