"Seven bells! Tumble up, starbowlines, an' show a leg. There's burgoo for breakfast."
It was Jim calling the watch at 7.20 a.m., so that they could get their breakfast before going on deck at eight bells.
"Burgoo? Who said burgoo?" cried Red Bill, sitting up excitedly at the announcement of this luxury.
"I've just seen Lung cooking it," declared Jim. "The steward says there's to be burgoo for breakfast from forty to forty."
"Then we're in the Roaring Forties all right," observed Jack.
"Did you see that ere chink a-cookin' of it, did you say, kid?" inquired old Ben Sluice.
"Yes, I did," replied the boy.
"Well, I'm glad I didn't, or I couldn't have ate it, for sure," returned the ex-miner with a grunt. Like many westerners, he considered the pig-tail tribe as "rank p'ison," and he never lost an opportunity of deriding the Higgins' cook.
"How's that ere boisterous party, the weather, a-conductin' himself this maunin'?" asked Broncho. "I'm hopin' he's got his fur some smoothed since last night, when he's shore more pesky than a croger[8] with the indigestion."