SHIPWRECKED ON YETORUP 
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cooks, and to-day everyone tried to outdo himself. 
John could cook an otter cutlet to perfection, and 
Jack, again, could make a sea-parrot (puffin) stew 
that makes one’s mouth water to think about; and 
so on, everybody having his special dish to concoct-— 
the whole to wind up with a dessert of currant 
fritters. We did not have many cooking utensils, 
and consequently the viands had to take their turn 
in preparation. We had improvised a table-—we 
generally did without one—of a few empty boxes 
and some boards belonging to the boats, covered 
with boat-sails, and on it stood now a tempting array 
of bottles of beer, rum, and gin. Some of the boys 
had already laid in a good priming in opening the 
festivities, and tongues were wagging in all directions. 
“ It was about six o’clock in the evening. All 
the dishes were ready except the fritters, which were 
now about to be prepared by the skilful manipula¬ 
tion of Mr.—let us call him Jenkins—who had 
mixed the dough, and, with a pan of boiling seal-oil 
before him, was showing us his dexterity in frying 
them to a turn. I don’t know exactly how it began. 
I believe somebody had insinuated that to immerse 
the fritters in boiling oil was not the most palatable 
way to cook them, but that they should be fried 
with very little fat, and they would then keep their 
flavour, and not taste so much of the rank seal-oil. 
Of course Mr. Jenkins, an old experienced cook and 
seaman, could not stand any nonsense from any¬ 
body, and strongly repudiated the idea of anyone 
making an improvement in his cooking ; and while 
the rest of us were listening to a yarn of how the 
Mexican otter-hunter, Pelillo, shot seventeen otters 
standing on two 2-inch planks, while his boat was 
