We had a raft and half a dozen small rowing boats of all shapes and conditions, strung out, Indian file, from our stern. Every available thing in Golden Crescent Bay that could float, down to a canoe and an old Indian dug-out, we borrowed or requisitioned for our work. And, with this long procession in tow, we pulled out and made for the steamer, which came to a standby in the deep water, three hundred yards from the shore. The merchandise was let down by slings from the lower deck, and we had to handle the freight as best we could, keeping closely alongside all the while. A dozen times, I thought one or another of the boats would be overturned and its contents emptied into the Bay. But luck was with us. Jake spat tobacco juice on his hands every few minutes and sailed in like a nigger. Our clothes were soon moist through and through, and the perspiration was running over our noses long before our task was completed. But finally the last package was lowered and checked off by the mate and myself, a clear receipt given; and we (Jake and I) pushed for the shore, landing exhausted in body but without mishap to the freight. Jake fetched some fresh clams to my kitchen for convenience and, after slapping half a plug of tobacco in his cheek, he started in and cooked us a savoury concoction which he called "chowder," made with baked clams mixed in hot milk, with butter and crumbled toast; all duly seasoned:--while I smoked my pipe and washed enough dishes to hold our food, and set the table for our meal. Already, I had discovered that dish-washing was the bugbear of a kitchen drudge's existence, be the kitchen drudge female or male. I had only done the job three or four times, but I had got to loathe and abhor the operation. Not that I felt too proud to wash dishes, but it seemed such a useless, such an endless, task. However, I suppose everything in this old world carries with it more or less of these same annoyingly bad features. At any rate, I never could make up my mind to wash a dish until I required it for my next and immediate meal. We dined ravenously, and throughout the proceeding, Mike sat in the doorway, keeping close watch that I did not interfere with the sacred person of his lord and master, Jake Meaghan. Rested and reinvigorated, we set-to with box-openers, hammers and chisels, unpacking and unpacking until the thing became a boring monotony. Canned milk, canned beef, canned beans, canned salmon, canned crabs, canned well-nigh-everything; bottled fruits, bottled pickles, bottled jams and jellies, everything bottled that was not canned; bags of sugar, flour, meal, potatoes, oats and chicken feed; hardware galore, axes, hammers, wedges, peevies, cant hoops, picks, shovels, nails, paints, brooms, brushes and a thousand other commodities and contrivances the like of which I never saw before and hope never to see again. Never, in all my humble existence, did I feel so clerky as I did then.