His meditations were disturbed by a soft tap on the office door. Dickie Lang entered.
"I knew I'd find you here," she said. "Smoking yourself to death and worrying gray. I've come to take you outside for a while. You'll be sick if you go on like this. Forget for a while and come with me. The boys are having a mussel-bake on the beach and they've sent for you. If you have ever eaten kelp-baked mussels you'll not wait to be urged. The grunion should run to-night too, and I want you to see them."
Gregory drew his fingers through his tousled hair and shook his head. "I'm sorry," he said. "But I can't go. I'm waiting for a radio from Diablo."
"Bosh!" the girl interrupted. "It won't take one of the boys five minutes to bring you the message if it comes while you're gone." She came closer and
placed a hand on his arm. "Please come," she said. "Just to please me."
Gregory had no alternative. Leaving word with one of the night men to send him any radio despatch at once, he followed Dickie to the beach, where the service men sat cross-legged about a blazing fire of drift-wood. Gregory sank to the sand beside the dark mound of dampened kelp and watched the operations of the chef as he busied himself in removing the heavy pieces of canvas which covered the sea-grass.
"It's nature's fireless-cooker," explained the girl as she took her place beside him. "You can cook most anything in an oven like that if you know how. It's simple enough too. All you have to do is to scoop out a hole in the sand and line it with rocks to hold in the heat. Then build your fire and let it burn for a couple of hours to get a good bed of coals. Cover them with a thin layer of damp kelp and put in the potatoes. Another layer of sea-weed, then the roasting-ears. After that come the fish, wrapped in paper. Then the mussels, clams or anything else you want. When you get them all in, cover the whole thing with a lot of heavy kelp and batten it down with a big piece of canvas. The whole trick is knowing just when to open the oven. Nothing can burn so it's better to leave it too long than to try to hurry things."
Gregory took the tin-plate, piled high with its smoking delicacies, and leisurely freed a succulent mussel from its shell. As he placed it in his mouth his
eyes lit up with genuine pleasure and the anxious lines slowly disappeared from his face.
"What do you think of them?"