CHAPTER II THE FLEET SETS SAIL
"Come over here to the table and set down," said the cook, with a kindly smile. So tiny was the cabin that one step took Alec to the proffered stool. Ravenously hungry though he was, his surroundings were so new and interesting that for a moment he almost forgot to eat, as he looked around the cabin.
Tiny it was, indeed. And yet everything in it was so compactly arranged that half a dozen men could live in it. In one corner stood a small, square stove, now delightfully hot, with its top guarded by a slender iron railing, like a miniature fence. Alec knew at once that this was to keep the pots and pans from sliding off the stove when the ship was pitching about. Even the dishes were suggestive of rough weather; for the cook had given Alec his coffee in a big bowl, and the huge plate which he was filling up with pork-chops, fried eggs, and steaming fried potatoes, was nothing but a great soup plate. Beside the stove stood a little cupboard, and this, with the stove, practically filled the stern end of the cabin. A coal-oil lamp was fastened to the wall between stove and cupboard.
There was just room enough left in this part of the cabin for the men to pack themselves around the table. The table, however, occupied less space than any table Alec had ever heard of, for it was nothing but two smooth, unpainted boards, perhaps four feet long, and hinged so as to fold together lengthwise. One end of this table now rested in a frame on the port side of the cabin, while the other end was slung from the cabin roof by a rope.
Alec thought he had never tasted anything so good as the pork-chops and fried eggs. Before he knew it, the cook was filling up his plate again, and pouring him a second bowl of coffee. Alec dumped some sugar in it and poured out a generous supply of condensed milk from the tin can the cook shoved toward him.
Now he noticed that the little cabin had a window and a door on each side. The stove and the cupboard occupied the stern end of the cabin. The forward end of the cabin contained bunks, built one above another, along the sides, where several men could sleep. The forward end of the cabin had been converted into a little pilot-house, with glass windows along its entire front and a door at each side, where the captain operated the boat.
For, like most of the oyster craft, the Bertha B had been changed from sailing ship to power boat. The four-cylindered gasoline engine that drove the ship and operated the oyster-dredges stood immediately below the cabin bunk room. Alec could see the engine, for a little hatchway in the floor of the cabin led directly to the engine room. The hatch was open and Alec could see a man oiling and adjusting the engine, preparatory to getting under way.
When Alec had eaten his fill, the cook began to wash the dishes. Alec picked up a dish towel and dried them. The cook seemed surprised and pleased. Alec stacked the dishes away in a tiny cupboard behind the bunks, at the cook's direction, while the cook folded up the table and stowed it in a rack overhead, leaving the tiny cabin clear and orderly.