"I guess he forgot to thank the cook for putting so many bugs in the tea," ventured Brenden.
"Maybe he's going aft to take Christmas Dinner with the captain in the cabin. They have a real plum pudding there; I saw it in the galley," said Joe.
Plum pudding! Christmas! The thoughts of loved ones far away, and of those distant homes that perhaps were remembering some of us out on the broad bosom of the deep waters, came as a pang. All of us, I believe, felt this. For a moment or two silence ensued, then Fred burst through the fo'c'sle door with the big surprise.
"_Pie, boys! Pie!_" he shouted, depositing three tin plates on the fo'c'sle deck, for we dined with the deck as a table, sitting about the kids on low benches. The precious pie was cut with the greatest regard for equality by no less an expert hand than that of Frenchy, assisted by Australia, who showed us how to cut a pie into three parts by measuring across the diameter with a knife, adding a little to this, and then this length went three times into the circumference.
Jimmy Marshall failed to agree with this theory, but was fairly beaten in the result, for Australia was right. The pie certainly was cut into three very equal parts.
"An engineer in the mines showed me this," said Australia. "He says, 'Pie times across the pie, is all the way around.' Mathematics is wot he calls this." Australia was nearly right at that, and the marks he made on the crust of the confections baked by Chow served as a reliable guide for Frenchy, also bolstering him immensely in the eyes of the more humble members of the port watch. That Australia chap certainly knew a thing or two, even if he was not the best sailor in the world.
But Jimmy Marshall's comment was simply, "Rats!"
After supper, when pipes were glowing, and most of us sought our bunks for the hour or so that remained to us in the last dog watch, a discussion arose as to what kind of pie it was. Frenchy, the great gastronomic authority, claimed it was English currant pie. "They taste so bitter, that's why I know," he added with an air of finality.
Others differed with him. Scouse said it was red crabapple pie. Martin claimed it was nothing but plum pie. I thought it tasted like cranberry, but was not sure. At last, to settle the matter, and at the earnest request of the crabbed Jimmy, Fred trudged aft to the galley to consult Chow and wind up the argument. He returned in triumph with a large tin can done up in a gaudy red label marked "Pie Fruit."