Jack at Sea: All Work and No Play Made Him a Dull Boy

by George Manville Fenn

The lad hesitated for a moment, and then drew aside for Edward to refill his cup, with which he had been eating sparingly of some well-made toast.

“Find that rather stale, Mr Jack?” said the captain.

“No; it is very nice,” said the lad. “Ah, the toasting takes it off. Four days out. That’s as long as we go with the same bread. Begin making our own to-morrow.”

Just then Edward handed Doctor Instow a goodly rasher of broiled ham, upon which was a perfectly poached egg; and directly after the man came round behind Jack, and quietly placed before him, with a whisper of warning that the plate was very hot, another rasher of ham, and at the first sight of it the lad began to shrink, but at the second glance, consequent upon a brave desire not to show his repugnance, he saw that it was a different kind of rasher to the doctor’s, and that there was no egg. It was small and crisp and thin, of a most beautiful brown, with scarcely any fat, and showing not a drop in the hot plate. There was a peculiar aroma, too, rising from it, grateful and appetising, and after sipping at his fresh hot cup of tea—the second—twice, Jack broke off another fragment of his crisp toast and ate it slowly.

A minute passed away, his four companions eating in sea-going fashion, which is rather costly to the person that caters, and they were talking aloud meantime, but every one present made a point of not taking the slightest notice of the sensitive lad.

That hot tea at the first mouthful of the first cup was nauseating, and Jack glanced toward the door and waited before venturing upon a second. But that second mouthful was not so bad, and it seemed to him that the captain certainly had good tea provided. Then Jack had broken off a scrap of the brown toast and eaten it, feeling at the end of a minute or two that he had never before known what well-made toast was like.

And so he had gone on very slowly, but certainly surely, till that piece of broiled ham—just such a piece as might tempt an invalid—was placed before him by Edward, who winked afterwards at the steward.

Jack would have resisted with scorn the suggestion that he was an invalid, and he was in utter ignorance of the doctor having entered into a conspiracy with the steward and cook just before they sat down; but that triumvirate had conspired all the same, and the result was that dry toast and that thin shaving of brown ham, which from the moment it was placed under his nose began to tempt him.

What wonder! Three days lying in a berth aboard ship, three days of hardly touching food; and now at last sitting at a pleasant breakfast-table in an exasperating appetite-sharpening atmosphere, which came in through the open window along with the bright sunshine, while four people were cheerily chatting and eating away like men who knew how good breakfast can be.

Then, too, there was that insidious preparation—that sending in of skirmishers of dry toast to attack the enemy before a bold advance was made with the ham.