ole to escape from it.

What was to be done for a cooking-stove?

Snowball sighed as he thought of his caboose, with all its paraphernalia
of pots and pans,--especially his great copper, in which he had been
accustomed to boil mountains of meat and oceans of pea-soup.

But Snowball was not the individual to give way to vain regrets,--at
least, not for long. Despite that absence of that superior intellect,--
which flippant gossips of so-called a "Social Science" delight in
denying to his race, themselves often less gifted than he,--Snowball was
endowed with rare ingenuity,--especially in matters relating to the
_cuisine_, and in less than ten minutes after the question of a
cooking-stove had been started, the Coromantee conceived the idea of one
that might have vied with any of the various "patents" so loudly
extolled by the ironmongers, and yet not so effective when submitted to
the test. At all events, Snowball's plan was suited to the
circumstances in which its contriver was placed; and perhaps it was the
only one which the circumstances would have allowed.

Unlike other inventors, the Coromantee proclaimed the plan of his
invention as soon as he had conceived it.

"Wha' for?" he asked, as the idea shaped itself in his skull,--"wha' for
we trouble 'bout a pot fo' burn de oil?"

"What for, Snowy!" echoed the sailor, turning upon his interrogator an
expectant look.

"Why we no make de fire up hya?"

The conversation was carried on upon the back of the whale,--where the
sharks had been butchered and cut up.

"Up here!" again echoed the sailor, still showing surprise. "What
matter whether it be up here or down theear, so long's we've got no
vessel,--neyther pot nor pan?"

"Doan care a dam fo' neyder," responded the ex-cook. "I'se soon show
ye, Mass' Brace, how we find vessel, big 'nuff to hold all de oil in de
karkiss ob de ole cashlot, as you call him."

"Explain, nigger, explain!"

"Sartin I do. Gib me dat axe. I soon 'splain de whole sarkumstance."

Ben passed the axe, which he had been holding, into the hands of the
Coromantee.

The latter, as he had promised, soon made his meaning clear, by setting
to work upon the carcass of the _cachalot_, and with less than a dozen
blows of the sharp-edged tool hollowing out a large cavity in the
blubber.

"Now, Mass' Brace," cried he, when he had finished, triumphantly
balancing the axe above his shoulder, "wha' you call dat? Dar's a lamp
hold all de oi