"Don't go down there, yet, Boston," said the doctor. "It may be full
of carbonic acid gas. She's been afire, you know. Wait." He tore a
strip from some bedding in one of the rooms, and, lighting one end by
means of a flint and steel which he carried, lowered the smouldering
rag until it rested on the pile below. It did not go out.
"Safe enough, Boston," he remarked. "But you go down; you're younger."
Boston smiled and sprang down on the pile, from which he passed up a
box. "Looks like tinned stuff, Doc. Open it, and I'll look over here."
The doctor smashed the box with his foot, and found, as the other had
thought, that it contained cylindrical cans; but the labels were faded
with age. Opening one with his jack-knife, he tasted the contents. It
was a mixture of meat and a fluid, called by sailors "soup-and-bully,"
and as fresh and sweet as though canned the day before.
"We're all right, Boston," he called down the hatch. "Here's as good a
dish as I've tasted for months. Ready cooked, too."
Boston soon appeared. "There are some beef or pork barrels over in the
wing," he said, "and plenty of this canned stuff. I don't know what
good the salt meat is.
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