While he was examining the lockers and shelves, he found part of a leg of bacon, and some potatoes, which had been left from the stores used by the crew on the passage from New York up to the lake. There were coffee and tea in the canisters, sugar in the buckets, butter and salt in the boxes; though all these articles had been more or less soaked in the water, depending upon the tightness of the vessels that held them. There was a good fire in the stove, and a bright thought entered Lawry's excited brain; he and his companion would breakfast on fried ham and potatoes, flanked with hot coffee!
Lawry was a cook of no mean accomplishments, and he immediately went to work in carrying out his brilliant idea. Somehow, it is a singular fact that boys have a special delight in "getting up something to eat" in the woods, on the water, and generally in all out-of-the-way places. A dinner at Parker's or Delmonico's is not to be compared with baked potatoes and roasted ears of corn in the woods, or with fried fish and potatoes in a boat or on an island. The young pilot was no exception to the common rule, and in a state of rapture known only to the amateur cook of tender years, he put on the teakettle, pared and sliced the potatoes, and put a quantity of the brown mud from the canister into the coffeepot.
Things were hissing and sizzling on the stove in the most satisfactory manner, and Lawry presided over the frying-pan with a grace and dignity which would have been edifying in a professional cook. While the ham was cooking, he wiped the dishes with a cloth he had dried at the fire, and set the table on the broad bench at the end of the kitchen. The meat and the potatoes were "done to a turn," but the coffee had a suspicious look, owing to the absence of the fish-skin, or other ingredient, for settling it. The contents of the basket brought from home were tastily disposed in dishes on the table, and breakfast was ready. We will venture to say that, in spite of the disadvantages under which this meal was prepared, many steamboat men have sat down to a less satisfactory banquet.
Lawry, chuckling with delight at what he had done, rang the hand-bell he found in the kitchen, at the door. If Ethan had smelled the savory viands in the course of preparation for him, he had made no sign; but he was probably too busy to heed anything but the darling engine he was so affectionately caressing with handfuls of packing and spurts of oil.
"What's that bell for, Lawry?" shouted he.
"Breakfast's ready," replied Lawry.
"I wouldn't stop to eat now—would you?"
"Things will be cold if you don't."
"Cold?" laughed Ethan.
"Yes—cold. What's the use of having a kitchen if you don't use it?"