Page:To Alaska for Gold.djvu/140

122 not working on the boat, Dr. Barwaithe took it upon himself to perform the "household duties," as he expressed it, and soon a well-cooked breakfast was arranged on a rude table Captain Zoss had stuck up. The doctor was an excellent cook, and Foster Portney could not help but ask him whence his knowledge had been derived.

"It's easily explained," said the doctor. "I have an older sister who was once the head of a cooking school in Montreal. She insisted on it that every one should know how to cook, especially a bachelor like myself, and she used to deliver her lectures to me, at home, before delivering them at the school. I believe I was an apt pupil, but I never dreamed at that time of how useful the knowledge would become."

"Which goes for to prove a feller can't know too much," remarked Captain Zoss. "But come on," he added, draining off his big tin cup of coffee, and springing up. "That ere boat ain't going to build itself." And off he hurried for the woods, carrying all of the tools he could carry. In a moment the boys and Foster Portney followed him.

They found the rough slabs of lumber as they had left them, and sticking them up in convenient places, began the task of smoothing them off into boards, working first with their axes and then with the drawing-knife and the plane. It was no light labor, and night was again upon them by the time the boards were ready