Chapter 1351 - Dry Rations and Virgin Brides
"Heading back where?" Mao Shisan immediately tensed. For the sailors eager to return home, going back to port meant going home. But for Mao Shisan, who viewed the Haitian as paradise, "heading back" represented an unknowable future.
"Probably back to Lingao. We've been out too long," Fu Ji said, flicking water droplets from his hands as he tossed a clean radish into the basket. "Once we get to Lingao, you'll be living the good life." There was that phrase again.
"Yeah." Mao Shisan agreed half-heartedly. What had been a reasonably pleasant day was suddenly cast in shadow.
Lunch was relatively simple. A one-dajin package of "naval rations" was unwrapped from its wax paper and tossed into the large pot, along with chopped vegetables, then water was added and the whole thing cooked into a gray slurry. The cook would also add bits from a small jar—shrimp, dried or the like. When supplies were good, meat was added as well. In short, it was a one-pot stew of grain and vegetables combined.
The stew wasn't much to look at, but it tasted passable. When seas were rough, however, the gray slurry wouldn't be served; instead, ready-to-eat military rations were distributed directly to the soldiers, along with sweetened hot black tea to help them swallow. After the tea was distributed, the tea leaves at the bottom of the barrel weren't wasted either—they were dried on the steam pipes and mixed into the next meal's congee or stew. Tea leaves contained carotene, fiber, and other nutrients; throwing them away would be wasteful, so they had been added to the food inventory.
Every time the brick-like rations were served, complaints rippled through the soldiers. Some pocketed them as snacks to chew when hungry, but most gnawed a couple of bites with expressions of disgust and then tossed them out the portholes. The NCOs pretended not to notice.
"What a waste," the portly cook liked to say, showing off his vocabulary. He'd always been low-key, but occasionally dropped obscure phrases. According to Fu Ji, the cook had originally been a scholar whose obsessive pursuit of fine cuisine drove him to spend lavishly on tastings until his family fortune was exhausted. Desperate, he had sought refuge with the chiefs.
Once Fu Ji and Mao Shisan understood the meaning of the idiom, they too shook their heads in dismay. Yet neither the cook nor Fu Ji would stoop to gnawing the bricks themselves. For galley staff, preparing something a bit nicer was always an option—at minimum, they could boil the rations before eating. Once, Mao Shisan had dropped a piece of the dry ration in front of Oscar the cat; the cat sniffed it, turned up his nose, and walked away. Even a cat wouldn't eat this stuff.
But Mao Shisan, driven by ingrained habit, still ate it. For someone who had lived in chronic semi-starvation, wasting food was a physical pain. His foster father had said only the emperor ate just the heart of the cabbage and threw away the rest—anyone else who did such things would be punished by heaven. So he had made a point of collecting the discarded rations; soldiers would casually hand theirs to him, and within days a stack of dry rations had piled up in his sleeping corner—until Fu Ji discovered it.
"Good heavens!" Fu Ji exclaimed in alarm. "If an officer sees this, they'll think you're stealing military supplies! You'll be strung up from the mast. Get rid of it, quick!"
Watching Mao Shisan reluctantly toss the rations overboard with pained expressions, the tobacco-chewing portly cook bragged: "Back when we stopped in Shandong, two ration bricks could buy a virgin bride. Shisan, you just threw a dozen wives into the sea."
"More bragging," Fu Ji shot back. "So how come you never traded for yourself a cook's wife?"
"Regulations, my boy. For this business between the legs, dozens have already been disciplined—lost their medals, transferred to the White Horse Corps or the Saber Corps... thank heavens most were Army..."
The cook continued, unfazed: "Besides, we ship-runners are away from home all year. Keep a wife back home and you're not afraid of being cuckolded? 'Cuckolded'—you know what that means, kid?"
Mao Shisan huddled in the corner without responding, but his mind drifted to the beggar-shed hovels by LĂĽshun harbor, the abandoned infants at roadsides, the corpses fought over by feral dogs, his foster father he might never see again. Tears streamed down his face.
"What are you crying for? Get to Lingao and you'll be living the good life," Fu Ji chimed in again.
After serving everyone lunch, the three galley staff sat together drinking the enhanced version of the ration slurry—one of the small perks of working in the kitchen.
"Dinner tonight is going to need everyone's best effort," said the portly cook, wiping his mouth with satisfaction. "The XO said this feast welcomes Chief Huang and rewards the whole ship. Everyone needs to eat well—and eat safely. No mishaps." He produced a thick notepad from under his seat, consulted it several times, and assigned tasks to the two helpers.
After lunch, the galley crew began preparations for the evening banquet. The two young men measured rice into each mess tin according to quota, then stacked them neatly in the steaming cabinet, which would receive steam piped from the engine room.
The portly cook took Fu Ji ashore with a full set of equipment to butcher the beef and prepare the ingredients for dinner. The frozen beef thawed quickly in the warming afternoon sun, but even so, the two of them had to exert tremendous effort, eventually calling over two sturdy sailors to help with the heavy work.
Tallow and bones were set aside separately. Fu Ji set up a large cauldron on the riverbank and dumped in the various bits of beef fat, lighting a fire to render the oil. The pot sizzled and splattered, the smell wafting across the river.
Mao Shisan tended the fire, watching Fu Ji stir the pot as the tallow bubbled—he had never in his life seen this much oil.
"What, drooling?" Fu Ji teased him, seeing the saliva practically dripping from his eyes. "This stuff isn't for eating. It goes back to the factory for processing..."
Because of its high melting point, beef tallow was essentially indigestible if eaten directly; in cooking it was used only for flavor.
Mao Shisan couldn't accept the strange notion that perfectly good fat couldn't be eaten. But what he could and couldn't eat wasn't up to him—and as for tonight's reward dinner, he didn't dare get his hopes up. If he could scrounge some leftover broth at the end, he'd be satisfied.
One cow seemed like a lot, but for seventy or eighty men who rarely got to eat meat, it was but a drop in the bucket. After much deliberation, the portly cook decided that to ensure everyone got some meat, they'd make a hodgepodge stew. Except for the choice cuts reserved for the officers and patients, all the meat was stripped and diced, then combined with potatoes, radishes, cabbage, and onions into a single pot.
As it simmered, steam spurted from under the lid, and the entire galley filled with an earthshaking aroma of meat and vegetables. The fragrance escaped through the ventilation ducts on deck, drawing off-duty sailors to gawk, every one of them drooling.
Mao Shisan's throat was gurgling as he worked the bellows. This was torture of the second degree—worse than rendering fat, because the fat had smelled partly foul and couldn't be eaten directly. Now there was a whole potful of meat tumbling in the broth—freshly cooked meat wasn't something you got every day even in paradise.
The portly cook lifted the lid, picked up a piece of beef, tasted it, and nodded with satisfaction. He cut off a small piece for Oscar, who had been circling at his feet, and the rest went into Mao Shisan's mouth.
At that moment, Mao Shisan felt his soul leave his body and ascend to heaven.
"Shisan, close down the damper. Tonight's feast calls for a gathering, so I'm going to whip up some drinking snacks," the cook instructed, wiping his hands.
Dinner wasn't even ready yet when Chief Huang, who had gone to the Tartar capital, returned. Mao Shisan happened to be on deck dumping ash and watched the procession approach from the direction of Zhenjiangbu. Several hundred Tartar cavalrymen and servants escorted Chief Huang's palanquin—a truly impressive sight.
This is what being a proper official looks like, thought Mao Shisan.
"Shisan! Get to the island and start boiling water!" Fu Ji shouted frantically.
Large cauldrons were set up on Duozhi Island to provide "preliminary purification" for the newly arrived servants. Mao Shisan helped out: while these newcomers were stripped and herded into the steam room, he used long wooden forks to fish out the clothes they'd removed and dropped them one by one into the bubbling cauldrons for disinfecting. The clothes were too shoddy to salvage; the boiling was primarily to kill vermin and sterilize before recycling them as paper pulp.
"Come on, shave time!" The Haitian's barber stood at the bathhouse door with a gleaming razor. A long bench sat before him, one foot propped on it. As each person emerged, he sat them down, grabbed their queue, sliced it off with a single stroke, then spun the blade a few times until nothing remained but blue-tinged scalp. Watching this, Mao Shisan felt a chill on his own head—his own hair had only just started growing back.
Mao Shisan was busy boiling water, carrying water, running back and forth until his legs turned to jelly and he had no strength left even to carry firewood. Only when everything was finally done did he make his way back to the heavenly galley.
The moment he entered the kitchen, he collapsed to the floor, unable to move.
"Playing dead, are we? Get up and work!" The portly cook unceremoniously kicked him. "Time to serve dinner soon. You ate my meat—now you expect not to work?"
Mao Shisan staggered to his feet and helped Fu Ji prepare the evening's alcohol distribution.
The ship issued rum on a daily quota. Unlike European sailors who originally received rum to mask the stench of stored drinking water, the Haitian had excellent water purification equipment and disinfectant tablets. The fouling problem was easily solved; alcohol was mainly for crew recreation at sea and for warmth in high latitudes. Of course, drinking on duty was forbidden.
The sailors had already lined up outside the galley. Word of the reward dinner had spread, and they had long since smelled the stew; now every last man's appetite was in full force, waiting to feast.