Chapter 15

A SALT-JUNK CLUB IN A MAN-OF-WAR, WITH A NOTICE TO QUIT.

It was about the period of the Cologne-water excitement that my
self-conceit was not a little wounded, and my sense of delicacy
altogether shocked, by a polite hint received from the cook of
the mess to which I happened to belong. To understand the matter,
it is needful to enter into preliminaries.

The common seamen in a large frigate are divided into some thirty
or forty messes, put down on the purser's books as _Mess_ No. 1,
_Mess_ No. 2, _Mess_ No. 3, etc. The members of each mess club,
their rations of provisions, and breakfast, dine, and sup
together in allotted intervals between the guns on the main-deck.
In undeviating rotation, the members of each mess (excepting the
petty-officers) take their turn in performing the functions of
cook and steward. And for the time being, all the affairs of the
club are subject to their inspection and control.

It is the cook's business, also, to have an eye to the general
interests of his mess; to see that, when the aggregated
allowances of beef, bread, etc., are served out by one of the
master's mates, the mess over which he presides receives its full
share, without stint or subtraction. Upon the berth-deck he has a
chest, in which to keep his pots, pans, spoons, and small stores
of sugar, molasses, tea, and flour.

But though entitled a cook, strictly speaking, the head of the
mess is no cook at all; for the cooking for the crew is all done
by a high and mighty functionary, officially called the "_ship's
cook_," assisted by several deputies. In our frigate, this
personage was a dignified coloured gentleman, whom the men dubbed
"_Old Coffee;_" and his assistants, negroes also, went by the
poetical appellations of "_Sunshine_," "_Rose-water_," and "_May-
day_."

Now the _ship's cooking_ required very little science, though old
Coffee often assured us that he had graduated at the New York
Astor House, under the immediate eye of the celebrated Coleman
and Stetson. All he had to do was, in the first place, to keep
bright and clean the three huge coppers, or caldrons, in which
many hundred pounds of beef were daily boiled. To this end, Rose-
water, Sunshine, and May-day every morning sprang into their
respective apartments, stripped to the waist, and well provided
with bits of soap-stone and sand. By exercising these in a very
vigorous manner, they threw themselves into a violent perspiration,
and put a fine polish upon the interior of the coppers.

Sunshine was the bard of the trio; and while all three would be
busily employed clattering their soap-stones against the metal,
he would exhilarate them with some remarkable St.