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On gala days he would have us in to dine with him, when he would regale us with lobscouse and salmagundi, or perhaps with an outland dish, a pillaw or olla podrida, or fish broiled after the fashion of the Azores, for he had a famous trick of cooking, and could produce the delicacies of all nations.
I scurried forward, intent upon dinner. I drew my whack from the Chinaman in the gallery, and bolted it down in the empty foc'sle. It was a miserable repast, a dish of ill-cooked lobscouse, and a pannikin of muddy coffee, and I reflected glumly that I had joined a hungry ship as well as a hot one. I finished the last of that mysterious stew, and then filled and lighted my pipe.
The place was small and dark, with bunks ranged along either side, and a stove in the centre, at which one of the hands, selected as cook, was just giving a final stir to a steaming compound of meat, potatoes, and biscuit, all stewed up together, and dubbed by sailors "lobscouse."
"Don't you worry about that," said the inn-keeper, "sit down." After Lars Peter had seated himself, he was given some lobscouse and a small bottle of wine, and soon felt at peace with the world. The inn-keeper was a pleasant man with a keen sense of humor. Lars Peter was glad of a talk with him, and before he was aware of it, had poured out all his troubles.
I had as fine a set of teeth as ever cracked biscuit by the time I was six months old, and lived upon lobscouse and porter. I was weaned by that time, and I wasn't two years old when I could go aloft like a monkey. It wouldn't have done for me to have been like any every-day sort of baby."
I have been on board the Andromeda many times. Ah, Peter, I see you. What is it to-day, scouse or lobscouse?" "Scouse, miss," said the ship's cook, grinning widely at her recollection of the line drawn by both his patrons and himself between ship's biscuit stewed with fresh meat and the same article flavored with salt junk. Peter's recognition placed Iris's identity beyond doubt.
An order from the captain, who came up from his cabin just then and caught me mooning, to go forward and "make it eight bells," stopped my reflections at this interesting point; and the next moment I was more interested in a most appetising odour of lobscouse emanating from Ching Wang's galley than in poetical dreams of Atlantic isles and ocean wonders!
But if it's in King George's service, and he asks a cast in the Morning Star as far as London, I'll do what I can for him. There's my own cabin he can have and welcome. As to the cooking, it's lobscouse and salmagundy six days in the week; but he can bring his own cook aboard with him if he thinks our galley too rough for his taste."
The skipper laughed as he went down again to get the rockets and blue lights which were kept in a spare cabin aft for safety. "He's a rum chap, that little beggar," he observed to Mr Fosset, who had been forward to set the look-out men on the forecastle and had returned to the bridge. "I think if you told him he was the laziest loafer that ever ate lobscouse, he couldn't help saying `Quite so!"
If you taste it so much there won't be any left to go on the table!" "Where's the bag of hard-tack, Garth?" "Grub-box number two; port side by the rail." "Idiot! You put them on the bottom of the box! The water's leaked through, and they're all mush underneath!" "What's the diff? Stick the soft ones in the lobscouse!"
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