Pursuing the narrative presented to us by the Sea Queen's apprentice, we find that the cook, if he is a good one, is a very important personage on board ship; he answers generally to the name of 'Slushy' or 'the Doctor,' and requires to be, and indeed almost always is, an individual of some resource, for he practises his calling amid difficulties such as would utterly dismay a chef de cuisine on land. His kitchen, to begin with, is such a mite of a place that the wonder is that he can fry, roast, or boil anything in it; then it is provokingly subject to sudden inundations, partial deluges which come tumbling in as if in sport, playfully extinguishing his stove, and sending his provisions, cooking utensils, and seasonings sliding and spinning all around him; while if he is worth his salt he will still, in spite of all these difficulties, turn out such a meal for the cabin table as Soyer under the circumstances need not have blushed to own. As is befitting in the case of such a superior being, he has certain social advantages; he can smoke in his galley whenever he chooses; and he slumbers peacefully all night in the best bunk of the forecastle, blissfully unconscious of the existence or claims of port or starboard watches. The apprentices are not so well off, although a premium of from thirty to sixty guineas is sometimes paid for their term of four years; the only advantage they have is living apart from the crew. Their duties are the same as those of a forecastle boy, and they share the same food, which is sufficient in quantity, but often very bad as to quality.
On the 9th March the first Australian sea-birds were sighted; and on the morning of the 16th they cast anchor in Sydney Harbour, which, with its wooded hills sloping gently down to the sea, seemed to our apprentice a perfect paradise of beauty. At Sydney they remained a fortnight, enjoying the luxury of very good and very cheap dinners, for meat only cost from twopence to fourpence per pound. After discharging their cargo, they sailed to Newcastle, sixty miles distant, to take in a cargo of coal, with which they sailed on the 23d April for Hong-kong, where they arrived on the 15th of June.
While at Hong-kong they had abundance of buffalo-meat, eggs, fruit, and soft bread, and plenty of hard work too, in washing out the hold of the ship, which had been much begrimed by the coals, to fit it for a cargo of tea. This the captain was unable to obtain, and was in consequence obliged to sail to Foo-chow, on the river Min, where, on the 13th of July, they arrived at Pagoda anchorage, so called from an old pagoda built on an island in the river, which widens out here to the dimensions of a small lake. Here also they waited in vain for a freight of tea, and the captain at last resolved to take a native cargo of poles to Shanghae, and try for better luck there.
On the 14th September they entered the Yangtze-kiang, where they found the scenery flat and uninteresting, but yet home-like, for the river reminded them of the Thames below London.
In the course of a week they unloaded their timber, but still no freight of tea could be procured; and the captain, after some delay, resolved to return to Foo-chow, taking as ballast native goods and medicines, two dozen sheep, and two dozen passengers. On the voyage back to Foo-chow, the cook having abandoned his post in disgust at the sharpness of a new Chinese steward, our apprentice was induced to volunteer his services, and was formally installed in his new office at four o'clock one fine morning. He began his arduous task by trying to kindle a fire, which for more than an hour obstinately resisted all his efforts to make it burn. At last he succeeded in evoking a tiny blaze, and thankful at heart even for that small mercy, he placed upon his fire the copper with water for the breakfast coffee, and marched off elate to get the rations for the day. It chanced to be a pork and pea-soup day; and having got his supplies of pork and pease, he returned to his galley, and was horror-struck to find that the sea was washing into it every few minutes, sometimes sportively rising almost as high as the precious fire which had cost him so much trouble. In his anxiety to preserve this cherished flame, the little tub of pork, which he had put out of his hands for a moment, capsized, and its contents were washed swiftly round and round the galley, to the surprise and disgust of the unfortunate amateur. At last, giving chase, he succeeded in capturing them with a considerable admixture of cinders; and having placed the tub and its heterogeneous contents out of harm's way, he concentrated his energies upon the question of the moment, which was coffee.
Tired of waiting for the water to boil, he threw in the coffee, and then, to while away the time, he began to pare some potatoes, which, by some unaccountable fatality, as fast as they were pared rolled out of the basin in which he placed them, upon the floor. Whish! away went the ship, lurching heavily, and away went the tub of pork again; and pork, tub, and potatoes began chasing each other round the galley in gallant style, being kept in countenance by a couple of buckets, which went frantically clanging and clanking against each other and everything else that came in their way. Despair shews itself in many ways: at this crisis our apprentice laughed; and he was still grinning over his own mishaps, when the watch arrived, sharp set for their coffee.
They were by no means in a laughing humour when they learned how the land lay, and neither was he, for that matter, when they left him. Convinced that at all risks he must make the water boil, he frantically heaped upon the fire odd bits of rope and canvas; but the water had a will of its own, and boil it would not. Eight o'clock struck, and again they came, each holding out an empty hook-pot, which he filled with by no means the best grace in the world, trying, as he ladled out the vile mixture, to sink the coffee, which floated like dust upon the surface. It would not do. First one man came growling back, and then another, and then the steward arrived to ask after the captain's potatoes. The captain's potatoes! He had forgotten all about them, and they had meanwhile been having a rare lark of it on deck, rattling first into one hole and then into another, until at last the greater number of them had scuttled overboard. What had he done? Had he been guilty of mutiny, insubordination, or gross carelessness as bad as either, on the high seas? In his panic he stepped back into the galley, which, for a wonder, happened to be free from water, and a hot coal falling out of the stove, burned his foot; and so ingloriously ended his career as cook.
At Pagoda Island the captain became seriously ill; and notwithstanding the most careful nursing on the part of his wife and our sailor apprentice, he passed away without ever having recovered consciousness, and was interred in the English cemetery at Foo-chow.
On the 6th November, the Sea Queen having loaded up, and being ready to start, a new captain came on board, the crew standing by the break of the forecastle and keenly eyeing him as he stepped on deck. There was not much to look at in him. He was a middle-sized man, with a moustache and whiskers of a sandy red hue; and that he did not despise his creature-comforts was evident from the quantity of provisions that came on board next day. He was, however, not illiberal with his good things, but from time to time presented the apprentices' mess with some little delicacies. As for the question of questions always asked by a crew with regard to a new captain: 'Does he carry on?' that is, does he risk a large press of sail in a stiff wind, it had to be answered in the negative. He was, in fact, as timid as his predecessor had been, but from a different cause—he had always formerly commanded a steamer, and his new duties were strange to him.
They had now been at sea for several weeks, when one lovely evening our apprentice was with his watch on deck, and had just lain down for an hour's nap, when the after-bell was struck hurriedly three times. As it was his duty to keep the time, and as the three strokes had, moreover, nothing to do with the proper hour, he suspected that something was wrong with the helmsman, a Swede, Edghren Andrews, and was just about to verify his suspicion, when the man rushed up to him and said: 'Will you take the wheel for a minute? I feel very sick; perhaps a swig of cold tea will set me up.' He went to get it; and in a few minutes returned to his post, where he had scarcely been a quarter of an hour, when the bell was again struck twice. A second time he went to the helmsman's assistance, and on the poop met Andrews, who said he was worse than ever; whereupon our apprentice offered to finish up his time for him.