Our tea was never without these disgusting vermin and none of us was ever able to tell what gave it the peculiar flavor that we came to relish--the twigs and leaves floating about in the brown liquor, or the roaches lying drowned in the bottom of the can. "They's no worse nor shrimps," philosophized Jimmy Marshall, and we tried to believe him. The cook, an ancient Celestial named Chow, hailing from Hong Kong, had evidently put all of his gods behind him. His pigtail was gone, and with it all sense of decency, so far as preparing food for sailor-men was concerned. Those human precepts that all cooks are supposed to act upon, the ethics, if you will, of the noble profession, that Marryat tells us entitled the practitioner to wear a sword, in those good old days when the Admiralty recognized the cook, were lacking in the breast of Chow. He was a typical deepwater cook. What went aft was right, so far as looks count anyway, but the kids that left for the fo'c'sle often contained the most unsavory messes that ill-fortune can concoct. Some of the men had words with Chow about this but the result was increased carelessness and decreased portions. "It don't do no good to scrap with the cook," was Jimmy Marshall's sage advice. "If the dirty bum wants to be dirty he can fix us all up. I knowed a cook once wot ---- in the soup an' bully on a English bark. The skipper, he caught him at it, an' puts him in irons. The cook had to be let out though because he was the only one wot could do the work, an' they was mighty careful aft not to rile him after they knowed wot he was. You got to leave them cooks alone." We left Chow severely alone, and some of the crowd, Joe and Tommy especially, constituted themselves his volunteer assistants, and almost every first dog watch, one of them would be around the galley helping out. Chow rewarded them by allowing the use of the oven to make "dandy funk," a mess of broken hard tack and molasses, baked to a crisp. When ten days had elapsed, after the final rations of fresh provisions had been issued, a tot of lime juice, that reeked suspiciously of vinegar, was served each day--by Act of Congress--to keep the sailor-man from getting scurvey. At the same time the "harness casks," beef to starboard, and pork to port, did their duty nobly and each week or so we would lift the forehatch and rouse up a slimy, wooden hooped barrel, and roll it aft to the galley door, alternating to the port and starboard harness casks.