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The salt-fish ration was probably rather better than the meat, but the cheese was nearly always very bad, and of an abominable odour. The butter was no better than the cheese. It was probably like so much train-oil. The bread or biscuit which was stowed in bags in the bread-room in the hold, soon lost its hardness at sea, becoming soft and wormy, so that the sailors had to eat it in the dark.
"No, no, my old master at the marlinspike," said Barnstable, kindly, "I know thee too well, thou brother of Neptune! but shall we not throw the bread-room dust in those Englishmen's eyes, by wearing their bunting a while, till something may offer to help our captured countrymen."
On arriving at the gun-room, he merely glances, with a well-bred air of assumed indifference, at the apartment of the officers, with whose habits and arrangements he scarcely ever ventures to meddle. He next dives into the cockpit, which in a frigate is used only for the purser's store-room, leading to the bread-room, both of which he examines carefully.
Right happy is that hour when the ship is fairly clear of all these annoyances sweethearts and wives inclusive and when, with the water filled up to the last gallon, the bread-room chock full, and as many quarters of beef got on board as will keep fresh, the joyful sound of "Up Anchor!" rings throughout the ship.
Upon one devolved the task of washing whatever silver was required for the next course. Another went out through the passage into the room where heaters kept the meat and vegetables warm in their several dishes. Perhaps another went further on to the bread-room, where she might even be permitted to cut bread with the bread-cutting machine.
The food supply of the Pilgrims, constituting part of the MAY- FLOWER'S Cargo, included, as appears from authentic sources: Winslow, in his letter to George Morton advising him as to his preparations for the voyage over, says: "Be careful to have a very good bread-room to keep your biscuit in." This was to keep them from dampness.
The latitude, at noon, was 53° 56' south, and the longitude, by the time-keeper, 188° 49' east. At two o'clock in the morning of the 13th, the ship was pooped with a very heavy sea, which entirely stove in the two midship windows of the stern, and filled the cabin with water, great part of which ran down into the bread-room.
The 27th and 28th were spent in refitting the ship for the sea, fixing a transom for the tiller, getting stones on board to put into the bottom of the bread-room, to bring the ship more by the stern, in repairing the casks, and catching fish. On the 29th, we received a visit from our old man, whose name we found to be Topaa, and three other natives, with whom Tupia had much conversation.
He had another woesome account of a sloop-of-war in which he had gone through the Straits of Magellan. The difficult navigation and balky winds made the passage protracted for a sailing-vessel; all were put on short rations, and the day before she entered a Chilian port the bread-room was swept to the last crumbs. "I often could not sleep for hunger when I turned in."
Here I found that the ship was bulged, and had a great deal of water in her hold, but that she lay so on the side of a bank of hard sand, or rather earth, and her stern lay lifted up upon the bank, and her head low almost to the water: by this means all her quarter was free, and all that was in that part was dry; for you may be sure my first work was to search and to see what was spoiled and what was free; and first I found that all the ship's provisions were dry and untouched by the water; and being very well disposed to eat, I went to the bread-room and filled my pockets with bisket, and ate it as I went about other things, for I had no time to lose.
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