Aroostook, with a cloud of snowy canvas filling overhead, was moving
over the level sea with the light ease of a bird that half swims, half
flies, along the water. A sudden dismay, which was somehow not fear
so much as an overpowering sense of isolation, fell upon the girl.
She caught at Thomas, going forward with some dishes in his hand,
with a pathetic appeal.

"Where are you going, Thomas?"

"I'm going to the cook's galley to help dish up the breakfast."

"What's the cook's galley?"

"Don't you know? The kitchen."

"Let me go with you. I should like to see the kitchen." She trembled
with eagerness. Arrived at the door of the narrow passage that ran
across the deck aft of the forecastle, she looked in and saw, amid
a haze of frying and broiling, the short, stocky figure of a negro,
bow-legged, and unnaturally erect from the waist up. At sight of
Lydia, he made a respectful duck forward with his uncouth body.
"Why, are you the cook?" she almost screamed in response to this
obeisance.

"Yes, miss," said the man, humbly, with a turn of the pleading black
eyes of the negro.

Lydia grew more peremptory: "Why--why--I thought the cook was
a woman!"