the whole preparation of a dinner for sometimes as many as five hundred people, except peeling potatoes and the actual cooking, devolved upon Sam alone, he was always up to time. It was dangerous to come near him, though, as that time drew near. For then he drew perilously near being a howling maniac. Yet no sooner had the last dish disappeared aft, than Sam would sally forth from the galley, his ebony countenance aglow with satisfaction, and a big pipe in his mouth. Down anywhere he would fling himself, ready to discuss any question in the world, from the ruling of an empire to the winning moves in a game of draughts. His successor, when he got promoted to the _City of Melbourne_, was a far better cook, and a paragon of order and cleanliness, but there wasn't a man in the ship to say a good word for him. He was a shy Englishman. Then, dropping still lower, I have every reason to remember the cook of the _Helen M'Gregor_, sweetest of small passenger steamers had she been on the London-Margate route, but a grisly terror when scaling the steeps of the Southern Pacific waves in a "southerly buster" between Grafton and Sydney. She was far too small for such an arduous service. Yet we carried over a hundred passengers when full. All her cooking was done in a caboose--just such a square box as may be seen on the deck of any old sailing barque--a cube of about eight feet clamped to the deck by iron rods. There was no table within it, only a locker seat which contained coals running across it in front of the stove. Two men could not pass between this locker and the stove without careful edging or one of them getting burnt. Most of the implements had permanent abiding places on the stove, but a few lived on racks above when not in use; and when the skittish little ship was dancing they would clatter down at intervals. Outside, in an angle between the back of the galley and the steam-chest, was a movable board for pastry (and other things). Its dimensions, with liberal measurement, may have been two feet square--not another inch, if I were bribed to say so.