Next day was fine, and Warriner was up before we finished washing down the decks. Pratt and me were curious about the plum-pudding, for we’d never seen one, and wanted to know what sort of idees the passenger had about cookery. He kept telling all the morning what fine ones his wife used to make, and said he’d show us a thing or two. We sat down to dinner—our Thanksgiving dinner. The Honorable looked more self-satisfied and important than usual, I thought; Cap’n Pratt was real good-natured and told a lot of lies that Warriner swallowed like an albacore does a flying-fish; I had scraped my face with an old hoe of a razor and put on a necktie; and Cornwallis stood in the pantry door behind Pratt with a white cap over his wool, and looking as solemn as a judge. He did well that day, and we had a first rate dinner. There was vegetable soup; chicken, rice and curry with Ceylon chutney; potatoes; boiled onions; lime-juice; and each a cold whiskey punch. At last it was time for the dessert. Cornwallis took away the things, while Warriner told us how much we had to be thankful for, and how he and the cook had worked to make the pudding a success. [Picture: “It was stuck full of long feathers!”] Well, the minute that pudding hove in sight Pratt and me laughed. The middle of it was stuck full of long feathers! “Heavens and earth! What are those things for?” cried Warriner. “Dem is fedders, sah. You tole me dat holly was to be stuck up in de middle, but dat bush ain’t to be foun’ in dese pahts. I done de best I could, Mass’.” “Was ever such a thing heard of! And are those feathers from the chicken we have just eaten?” “Laws, no. I done kotched de rooster—Golly! how dat ole bird did squawk—and I yanked de fedders out ob his tail. Dere dey is, a wavin’ like a flag.” Warriner was about to pull the feathers out and throw them away, but the Cap’n and me rather liked the looks of ’em, so he stopped. Then the sauce appeared. White of egg beaten stiff was on top of it. Next Cornwallis brought a dish and turned the brandy around the pudding. How awful it smelled! Not a bit like any brandy that I ever saw. Warriner looked a bit puzzled, but before he had time to say a word the cook struck a match and touched it to the liquor. The whole thing blazed right up to the skylight, and scared all hands nearly to death! You could have knocked me over with a fish-hook, and that darky rolled up the whites of his eyes and acted as if he was praying. Warriner’s face turned all colors, and Pratt was scared and mad both. He jerked the cloth and everything off the table, took off his coat and threw it on the blaze. Then he stamped on it.