narrative. Glorious as all these yarns were, instinct as they were with the inspiriting breath of adventure, Paul could almost have wished he had been left in ignorance of those incomparable clippers and packet ships, for there was something magnificently regal about the Clytemnestra; it would have been easy to offer her unstinted fealty; she was so obviously doing her best. And this afternoon he had crept forward by himself, as soon as his manifold duties had permitted, in order that no inveterate narrator might dull the fine edge of his enjoyment.
The cook was his chief entertainer, for they were thrown a good deal in each other's society. Six times a day Paul had to wait in the hot, narrow galley while the greasy Finn filled up the basket with tureens and platters, tea-pots, coffee-pots, vegetable and pudding dishes: one trip for the table of the captain and first mate, and another for that of the second mate, carpenter and sailmaker. Then at odd moments throughout the day he visited the galley for hot water, or to carry supplies from the store-room, or to heat irons to press the old man's shirts and pyjamas and handkerchiefs. And the cook had an anecdote to impart on each occasion.
He had recently got his discharge from a Yankee barque, the Ezra R. Smith on which there had been unlimited weekly rations of sugar and baking powder, yeast, spices, butter, and eggs preserved in water-glass. Wherefore, for the bread served on the Ezra R. Smith there had been no need to apologize; the plum duffs on the Ezra R. Smith thanks to the plethora of ingredients, had come into spontaneous and succulent being—they had, presumably, little kinship with the present rubberoid abortions. The prunes on the Ezra R. Smith had not been wrinkled of mien nor coal-like in consistency; the dried apples had been less reminiscent of scraps from a cobbler's floor; the pots and pans, the hatchets and meat-grinders had been more numerous and sharp, the ovens
