Having got the duff off his mind--and allow me to assure you that a sailing-ship cook's reputation hangs principally upon his ability to turn out a satisfactory duff--there is the beef. It has been soaking in sea water since the previous evening, to mollify in some measure its terrible salinity, and now the cook removes it therefrom, unless, as often happens in small ships, the steep-tub is the wash-deck tub also, in which case the meat must be taken out at 6 a.m. in order to allow the tub in which it has been soaking to play its part in the cleansing of the ship. But that is only a detail. If the cook be a clean man he will now wash the meat carefully (it needs washing badly) before putting it in the copper. But he may, and often does, think that process not at all necessary; it will be clean enough by the time it is cooked. With the duff bubbling fiercely, and the beef on the other side of the stove keeping in tune with it, the men's dinner needs no more thought on his part except to keep the fire going; so that he will be able to do a bit of cleaning up, if he has a weakness in that direction, or he may sit and smoke and meditate. The steward is preparing the cabin dinner aft in his pantry: a fruit pie, some tasty combination of tinned meat and potatoes, or even a fowl, if they are carried. In any case, as a rule the cook has only to see the food for the cabin through the actual cooking. At seven bells (twenty minutes past eleven, the ten minutes to the half-hour being allowed for the men to turn out) some one, usually an ordinary seaman, or boy where they are carried, in other cases the "cook of the mess," comes to the galley for the dinner. It must be ready, and is, almost invariably. Any delay is unpardonable, for there is only the "chunk" of beef and the "phallus" of duff. Since they have probably been fasting since the previous supper time, except for such few morsels as they have been able to get down at breakfast or "coffee-time," the arising watch are usually very sharp set, and the duff disappears like magic. The beef, too, although there be nothing to eat with it but the flinty biscuit, receives considerable attention, but is generally spared for supper, as it is better cold--if "better" can be used in connection with it at all.