small vessel. But mind and get a deep one with a cover, as a shallow one is of little use when the boat is pitching or rolling, or even sailing in smooth water but heeling over to the breeze.
If you happen to get hold of a good "Jap" for a sea cook, he will be able to boil rice correctly. Some fellows don't like rice. The reason is because they have never eaten it cooked to Oriental perfection, when every grain is plump and dry and separate from its fellow. It is different when you get a mushy abomination served up to you in lieu of a dish pretty to look at and grateful to the palate.
I learned to cook rice when a boy plying on a schooner owned by the Jehanum Jow Juldee Railroad, which used to connect Negapatam with Madras. The native cook was my teacher. First he placed his measure of rice in a deck bucket, washing it repeatedly with water fresh from the ocean. He explained to me in his Tamil language, that unless this process was followed the grains of rice would cling together and coagulate and form into a porridge, loathsome to look at and worse to taste. After washing the rice thoroughly, he placed it in a pot of furiously boiling fresh water—no salt being added. Then he would fire up like an infernal stoker and keep the pot in a splendid state of ebullition. And mark you, messmates all, he never stirred the heated mass!
After boiling for twenty minutes, he
