"feed." The cook uncovered his coppers, plunged his tormentors therein,
and produced such a succession of ugly corpses of fowls as I had never
seen before. To each man a whole one was allotted, and we bore the
steaming hecatomb into the forecastle. The boisterous merriment became
hushed at our approach, and faces grew lengthy when the unwholesome
aspect of the "treat" was revealed. Each man secured his bird, and
commenced operations. But oh, the disappointment, and the bad words!
What little flesh there was upon the framework of those unhappy fowls
was like leather itself, and utterly flavourless. It could not well
have been otherwise. The feathers had been simply scalded off, the heads
chopped off, and bodies split open to facilitate drawing (I am sure I
wonder the cook took the trouble to do that much), and thus prepared
they were cast into a cauldron of boiling salt water. There, with the
water fiercely bubbling, they were kept for an hour and a half, then
pitchforked out into the mess kid and set before us. We simply could not
eat them; no one but a Noumean Kanaka could, for his teeth are equal to
husking a cocoa-nut, or chopping off a piece of sugar-cane as thick as
your wrist.

After much heated discussion, it was unanimously resolved to protest at
once against the substitution of such a fraud as this poultry for our
legitimate rations of "salt horse." so, bearing the DISJECTA MEMBRA of
our meal, the whole crowd marched aft, and requested an interview with
the skipper. He came out of the cabin at once, saying, "Well, boys,
what's the matter?" The spokesman, a bald-headed Yankee, who had been
bo'sun's mate of an American man-of-war, stepped forward and said,
offering his kid, "Jest have a look at that sir." The skipper looked,
saying, inquiringly, "Well?" "D'yew think, sir," said Nat, "THET'S
proper grub for men?" "Proper grub! Why, you old sinner, you don't mean
to say you're goin' to growl about havin' chicken for dinner?" "Well,
sir, it depends muchly upon the chicken. All I know is, that I've et
some dam queer tack in my time, but sence I ben fishin' I never had no
such bundles of sticks parcelled with leather served out to me. I HEV et
boot--leastways gnawed it; when I was cast away in a open boat for three
weeks--but it wa'n't bad boot, as boots go. Now, if yew say that these
things is boots, en thet it's necessary we should eat'em, or starve,
w'y, we'll think about it. But if yew call'em chickens,'n say you'