"There was no growling or snarling, however, we were all very young, and formed as jolly a little mess as anyone could wish to be member of.
"I was caterer. It was a red-letter day, or two even, if, while on shore at say Mozambique, I could fall in with a sucking-pig."
"You requisitioned it?" said the captain.
"That's it. I used to say, Piggie, I arrest you in the Queen's name. Piggie spoke out, but I used to hand it to my marine, and he stopped the squealing.
"Huge yams roasted in the engine-room ashes, we thought a dish fit to set before a king. One yam, with pepper, salt, butter, and fried biscuit, would make a midnight supper for four of us. Then we could sleep.
"Sometimes on shore I stumbled across an Arab who had a few ostrich's eggs for sale, and again we were in clover."
"Are they very large, Grant?" said Creggan.
"Well, one broken and made into a kind of mash was all that six of us could eat for breakfast, flanked, of course, by a morsel of salt pork. After such a breakfast as this we would go singing on deck. We did manage to shoot some gulls now and then, and when skinned they didn't taste so very fishy.
"One day we caught a young shark; he made some trouble on deck, but gave up the ghost at last, and submitted to be cut up and shared with all the crew.
"Flying-fish wouldn't come near us, but a bonito was sometimes hooked, and when inshore we got bucketfuls of rock-oysters. So we didn't do so badly upon the whole, except when far out in the Indian Ocean making a long passage from one island to another.