Page:The Dark Frigate (Hawes).djvu/136

Looking down from the quarter-deck the Old One spied the cook, who had come up to warm his bald head and fat face in the sun and to clear the smoke from his nostrils. ‘‘Ho, cook,’’ quoth he, ‘‘I have a task for thee. Break out from the cabin stores rice and currants and cinnamon and the finest of thy wheaten flour. Seek you also a few races of green ginger. It may chance there is even a little marchpane, for this man Candle had a gentle palate. Spare not your old cheese, and if you unearth a cask of fine wine fail not to tell of it. In a word, draw forth an abundance of the best and make us such a feast as a man may remember in his old age.”

The cook smiled and rubbed his round paunch (yet cringed a little), for he was of a mind, being never slow in such matters, to filch from the cabin table whatever he might desire and his heart warmed to hear the good victuals named. ‘‘Yea, master,’ he cried, ‘‘for thee and for Mate Malcolm?”

“Nay, thou parsimonious dog! Think you that such are the manners of gentlemen mariners? Times have changed. Though I be master, there is no salt at my board. One man is as good as another and any man may rub his shoulder with mine.”

The Old One’s own men chuckled at the cook’s blank face and the boy shivered when he thought that he must wait on them all, of whom one was as likely as another