Page:The Naval Officer (1829), vol. 2.djvu/206

 kidneys, and onions. But it passed off without remark.

"Α very capital steak this! I'll trouble you for some fat and a little gravy. We'll have some jollification when we get to sea; but we must get into blue water first: then we shall have less to do. Talking of broiling' steaks, when I was in Egypt, we used to broil our beefsteaks on the rocks—no occasion for fire—thermometer at 200—hot as h—l! I have seen four thousand men at a time cooking for the whole army as much as twenty or thirty thousand pounds of steaks at a time, all hissing and frying at a time—just about noon, of course, you know—not a spark of fire! Some of the soldiers, who had been brought up as glass-blowers, at Leith, swore they never saw such heat. I used to go to leeward of them for a whiff, and think of old England! Ah, that's the country, after all, where a man may think and say what he pleases! But that sort of work did not last long, as you may sup-