That was the busiest year of my life. I was the first one up in the morning, and the last save the watch to turn in at night. In this dry-goods box of a kitchen I had daily to prepare a breakfast for seven men in the cabin, and another for eleven in the forecastle; a dinner for the cabin and another for the forecastle; likewise supper for the same. It was my business to set the aristocratic cabin table, clear it off and wash the dishes three times daily. I had to serve out the tea and coffee to the eleven men forward. The cabin expected hot biscuit for breakfast, and frequently pie and pudding for dinner. Above all men must the sea cook not only have a place for everything and everything in its place, but he must have everything chocked and wedged in its place. You must wash up your tea things, sometimes holding on to the deck with your toes, and the washtub with one hand, and wedging each plate, so soon as wiped, into a corner, so that it slide not away and smash. And even then the entire dish-washing apparatus, yourself included, slides gently across the deck to leeward. You can’t leave a fork, or a stove-cover, or lid-lifter lying about indifferently but what it slides and sneaks away with the roll of the vessel to some secret crevice, and is long lost. When your best dinner is cooked in rough weather, it is a time of trial, terror, and tribulation to bestow it safely on the cabin table. You must harbor your kindling and matches as sacredly as the ancients kept their household gods, for if not, on stormy mornings, with the drift flying over the deck and everything wet and clammy with the water-surcharged air of the sea, your breakfast will be hours late through inability to kindle a fire, whereat the cook catches it from that potentate of the sea, “the old man,” and all the mates raise their voices and cry with empty stomachs, “Let him be accursed.”