Cooking in a small craft tossed like a cork on the waves is a confounded nuisance, but a hot meal tastes well after you have been stuck at the tiller for four or five hours in squally weather. I remember an incident that occurred on board my cutter, the _Heather Bell_, when ingenuity provided a hot breakfast which otherwise we should not have enjoyed. We were caught in a southerly gale in the English Channel, and under trysail and spitfire jib we were doing our best to claw off a lee shore. I had been at the tiller nearly all night, and when day broke I was thoroughly exhausted. The little cutter—she was only fifteen tons—was pitching and 'scending at such a lively rate that lighting a fire in the stove was out of the question. My chum, however, managed to make some coffee with the aid of a spirit lamp, and also to cook a couple of plump Yarmouth bloaters. This last-named feat was difficult, but my chum was a man of genius. An inspiration came to him. He split the bloaters down the backs, put them in an extra deep frying pan, such as should always be used at sea, deluged them with Scotch whiskey, old and smoky, and set fire to it. I can see him now, hanging on to the cabin ladder with one hand and balancing the frying pan in the other, so that the blazing whiskey should not overflow and set fire to the cabin. Those bloaters were fine. They went right to the spot. It was rather an expensive mode of cooking, for the whiskey in question was choice, but we both agreed that the fishes were worthy of it. I suppose they would have tasted just as well if they had been cooked in alcohol, but that idea did not occur to my friend. A beefsteak prepared in the same way was delicious. We had it for dinner and soon after there came a shift of wind which enabled us to run for Newhaven and sleep comfortably.
You should take with you a box of seidlitz powders, a bottle of vaseline, court plaster, a box of your pet pills, a bottle of extract of witch hazel, a bottle of extract of ginger, a bottle of _Sun_ cholera mixture, and a bottle of Horsford's acid phosphate. These should be stowed away in a medicine-chest, which, if you have any mechanical skill at all, you can make yourself. If you are no hand at a saw or a chisel, a small medicine-chest, filled with all the requisites and adapted for use in a boat, can be obtained from any good drug-store at a reasonable figure.