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She was the Empress of the Ocean, and her home port was Liverpool. Captain Elisha, as a free-born Yankee skipper, had an inherited and cherished contempt for British "lime-juicers," but he could not help admiring this one. To begin with, her size and tonnage were enormous. Also, she was four-masted, instead of the usual three, and her hull and lower spars were of steel instead of wood.
Because of this custom, the long-voyage merchantmen who carried cargoes round the Horn or the Cape were for years nicknamed "Lime-juicers." Why We Cook our Food. While some of all classes of food may be eaten raw, yet we have gradually come to submit most of our foods to the heat of a fire, in various ways; this process is known as cooking.
Pea-soupers and lime-juicers are strangers off shipboard. They'd never have spotted you, though, without the bundle. There's no raw-meat tint about you; you're tanned like a native. Buy a blue jumper and get a cabbage-tree up in place of that cap, and you'd pass muster as a Sydney-sider born and bred. 'A cabbage-tree? 'Hat straw. Get a second-hand one if you can: they're more appreciated.
By George! everybody in Oa Bay was safe so long as they didn't try to make a fight of it; and he could have laughed to see the terrified women scooting for the church, the children bawling at their heels. The fools, what had they to fear? American officers were not the kind to fire on women and children, nor were they likely to look on mum-chance, and let the lime-juicers do it neither.
But we old sailors used to call all British ships 'lime-juicers, because they used to be the only ones that was compelled by law to carry lime juice." "Why lime juice?" Alice wanted to know. "To prevent scurvy, Miss. Lime juice, potatoes or anything like that will keep sailors from the scurvy disease, Miss. They found it out, the Britishers did, and made their ships carry such stuff.
Lime-juice and other anti-scorbutics were frequently served out: a precautionary measure which originated in Cook's day, and which down to our own times has caused all British sailors to be popularly known as "lime-juicers" in the American Navy. The dietary scale and the cooking were subjects of careful thought.
I was shanghaied into one of their lime-juicers once, an' I never forgot it! Slip below!" "No, I'll take my medicine!" said Jack grimly. "Might as well get it done with. This thing has been hangin' over my head a number of years now, and I'll be glad to hear the last of it. It's a terrible thing for an innocent man." "Perhaps some way may be found for clearing you," suggested Alice.
"There's plenty booting in lime-juicers, I guess; though I don't deny but what some of them are soft." And with that he smiled like a man recalling something. "Look here, that brings a yarn in my head," he resumed; "and for the sake of the joke, I'll give myself away. It was in 1874, I shipped mate in the British ship Maria, from 'Frisco for Melbourne.
"There's plenty booting in lime-juicers, I guess; though I don't deny but what some of them are soft." And with that he smiled, like a man recalling something. "Look here, that brings a yarn in my head," he resumed, "and for the sake of the joke I'll give myself away. It was in 1874 I shipped mate in the British ship Maria, from 'Frisco for Melbourne.
"Come, Captain," said I, "there are degrees in everything. You know American ships have a bad name; you know perfectly well if it wasn't for the high wage and the good food, there's not a man would ship in one if he could help; and even as it is, some prefer a British ship, beastly food and all." "O, the lime-juicers?" said he.
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