ch had been
cooked in it.

"Well, sir, what now?" said the Lieutenant of the Deck, advancing.

"They stole it, sir; all my nice _dunderfunk_, sir; they did, sir,"
whined the Down Easter, ruefully holding up his pan. "Stole your
_dunderfunk!_ what's that?"

"_Dunderfunk_, sir, _dunderfunk_; a cruel nice dish as ever man put
into him."

"Speak out, sir; what's the matter?"

"My _dunderfunk_, sir--as elegant a dish of _dunderfunk_ as you ever
see, sir--they stole it, sir!"

"Go forward, you rascal!" cried the Lieutenant, in a towering rage, "or
else stop your whining. Tell me, what's the matter?"

"Why, sir, them 'ere two fellows, Dobs and Hodnose, stole my
_dunderfunk_."

"Once more, sir, I ask what that _dundledunk_ is? Speak!" "As cruel a
nice----"

"Be off, sir! sheer!" and muttering something about _non compos
mentis_, the Lieutenant stalked away; while the Down Easter beat a
melancholy retreat, holding up his pan like a tambourine, and making
dolorous music on it as he went.

"Where are you going with that tear in your eye, like a travelling
rat?" cried a top-man.

"Oh! he's going home to Down East," said another; "so far eastward, you
know, _shippy_, that they have to pry up the sun with a handspike."

To make this anecdote plainer, be it said that, at sea, the monotonous
round of salt beef and pork at the messes of the sailors--where but
very few of the varieties of the season are to be found--induces them
to adopt many contrivances in order to diversify their meals. Hence the
various sea-rolls, made dishes, and Mediterranean pies, well known by
men-of-war's-men--_Scouse, Lob-scouse, Soft-Tack, Soft-Tommy,
Skillagalee, Burgoo, Dough-boys, Lob-Dominion, Dog's-Body_, and lastly,
and least known, _Dunderfunk_; all of which come under the general
denomination of _Manavalins_.

_Dunderfunk_ is made of hard biscuit, hashed and pounded, mixed with
beef fat, molasses, and water, and baked brown in a pan. And to those
who are beyond all reach of shore delicacies, this _dunderfunk_, in the
feeling language of the Down Easter, is certainly "_a cruel nice dish_."

Now the only way that a sailor, after preparing his _dunderfunk_, could
get it cooked on board the Neversink, was by slily going to _Old
Coffee_, the ship's cook, and bribing him to put it into his oven. And
as some such dishes or other are well known to be all the time in the
oven, a set of unprincipled gourmands are constantly on the look-out