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Then he proceeded to get supper. It had been a long time since he had indulged his natural taste for cookery. In a half-hour he had forgotten his anger and was revelling in the domain of pots and pans. He felt a sudden appetite of his own for the good, old-fashioned plum-duff of shipboard days, and started one going. Then gingercake his own kind came to his memory. He stirred up some of that.
I made a hash o' this cruise, did I? Well now, you all know what I wanted, and you all know if that had been done that we'd 'a been aboard the HISPANIOLA this night as ever was, every man of us alive, and fit, and full of good plum-duff, and the treasure in the hold of her, by thunder! Well, who crossed me? Who forced my hand, as was the lawful cap'n?
The silver spoons and forks were all ornamented with the Fosberton crest a curious animal, apparently dancing on a sugar-stick. "What is it?" whispered Barbara to Jack. "The sea-cook's dog," answered her cousin. "But what's he doing?" "He's stolen the plum-duff, and the skipper's sent him up to ride on a boom, and he's got to stay there till he's told to come down."
But a tar used to the rigging and sech don't take kindly to labor on land, so instead of working for other people, I up and started the Watch Below." "What is it a boarding-house?" "Not exactly, though we do occasionally take a fellow in. It's a temperance lunch-room for sailors, with regular first-class ship grub; lobscouse, plum-duff and sech.
"Ha, ha!" laughed our ancient friend, the Captain, when he saw what a day it was. "Ha, ha! what a day indeed!" and right away he began to call loudly for his boy, Main Brace, "Main Brace, Main Brace, come here! Come, bear a hand, and be lively there, you plum-duff, chuckle-headed young landlubber, and waddle along aft here on your sausage legs."
"That's one of your puzzlers, I think," she said, looking up slyly from the corners of her eyes. "Well, Sall, that is a puzzler," returned Adams, with a self-condemning shake of the head. "I never before felt so powerfully the want o' dictionary knowledge. I'll be shot if I can tell you what sentimental is, though I know what it is as well as I know what six-water grog or plum-duff is.
"All cooks have," said Sir Humphrey, smiling. "What is his worst?" "His plum-duff isn't fit to give a pig." "Is it like the one of which the passenger complained?" said Brace, laughing. "Eh? I dunno," said the skipper, staring. "I don't know that I ever heard of that one. What sort of a pudding was that?"
Well, if you had, you would understand that I felt no further hankerings over those masterpieces of the cook's art. I'm not extra particular, I believe, but I couldn't tackle them no thanks! I threw them into the scrub and then washed my hands!" "Poor you!" said Norah. "Oh, I wasn't so badly off," said the Hermit. "They'd left me the plum-duff, which was hanging in its billy from a bough.
"Had you just as soon come through the kitchen with me?" asked the Cap'n in a whisper as he approached his wife. "I'm goin' to do up what's left of that plum-duff and take it home. It kind o' hits my tooth!" Mr. Aholiah Luce, of the Purgatory Hollow section of Smyrna, stood at bay on the dirt-banking of his "castle," that is, a sagged-in old hulk of a house of which only the L was habitable.
Even his food lost its savour. Mrs. Beamish had taken over the cooking, and she went about it with an air that implied he had not had a decent bite to eat since his marriage. "There! what do you say to that now? That's something LIKE a pudding!" and a great plum-duff was planked triumphantly down in the middle of the dinner-table.
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