When we were fairly afloat and the Farallones were out of sight my fearful incapacity for the duties of the position became apparent. Besides, I was dreadfully seasick, and so remained for two weeks. Yet I cooked. It was purgatory, not only for myself but all hands. There was a general howl of execration forward and aft at my bread, my lobscouse, my tea, my coffee, my beef, my beans, my cake, my pies. Why the captain continued me in the position, why they didn’t throw me overboard, why I was not beaten to a jelly for my continued culinary failures, is for me to this day one of the great mysteries of my existence. We were away nearly ten months. I was three months learning my trade. The sufferings of the crew during those three months were fearful. They had to eat my failures or starve. Several times it was intimated to me by the under officers that I had better resign and go “for’ard” as one of the crew. I would not. I persevered at the expense of many a pound of good flour. I conquered and returned a second-class sea cook. The _Henry_ was a small vessel--the deck was a clutter of whaling gear. Where my galley or sea-kitchen should have been, stood the try-works for boiling blubber. They shoved me around anywhere. Sometimes I was moved to the starboard side, sometimes to the larboard, sometimes when cutting in a whale way astern. I expected eventually to be hoisted into one of the tops and cook aloft. Any well regulated galley is placed amidships, where there is the least motion. This is an important consideration for a sea cook. At best he is often obliged to make his soup like an acrobat, half on his head and half on his heels and with the roof of his unsteady kitchen trying to become the floor. My stove was not a marine stove. It had no rail around the edges to guard the pots and kettles from falling off during extra lurches. The _Henry_ was a most uneasy craft, and always getting up extra lurches or else trying to stand on her head or stern. Therefore, as she flew up high astern when I was located in that quarter, she has in more than one instance flung me bodily, in an unguarded moment, out of that galley door and over that quarter-deck while a host of kettles, covers, and other culinary utensils, rushed with clang and clatter out after me and with me as their commander at their head. We all eventually terminated in the scuppers. I will not, as usual, say “lee scuppers.” Any scupper was a lee scupper on that infernal vessel. I endeavored to remedy the lack of a rail about this stove by a system of wires attaching both pots and lids to the galley ceiling. I “guyed” my chief culinary utensils. Still during furious oscillations of the boat the pots would roll off their holes, and though prevented from falling, some of them as suspended by these wires would swing like so many pendulums, around and to and fro over the area of that stove.