“But,” said Zulu, “kin you cook a ’tater widout makin’ him’s outside all of a mush, an’ him’s inside same so as a stone?”
Instead of answering, Billy sat down on the settle which ran round the cabin and looked up at his dark friend very solemnly.
“Hallo!” exclaimed Zulu.
“There—there’s something wrong wi’ me,” said Billy, with a faint attempt to smile as he became rather pale.
Seeing this, his friend quietly put a bucket beside him.
“I say, Zulu,” observed the poor boy with a desperate attempt at pleasantry, “I wonder what’s up.”
“Des nuffin’ up yit but he won’t be long,” replied the young cook with a look full of sympathy.
It would be unjust to our little hero to proceed further. This being, as we have said, his first trip to sea, he naturally found himself, after an hour or two, stretched out in one of the bunks which surrounded the little cabin. There he was permitted to lie and think longingly of his mother, surrounded by dense tobacco smoke, hot vapours, and greasy fumes, until he blushed to find himself wishing, with all his heart, that he had never left home!
There we will leave him to meditate and form useless resolves, which he never carried out, while we introduce to the reader some of the other actors in our tale.