D'Artagnan, the King Maker — page 27: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

20 The Petrel Changes Hands. cordon-bleu, and busied himself with the other prepara- tions of the meal. He set one of those loaves on the table, common where bread is baked at one time for a fortnight, flanking it with a knife so broad as to lead it to ‘be supposed a portion of a scimeter; salt in a silver reliquary, chased with sacred emblems and a dedication to a saint; two kinds of pepper in a calabash, divided by a pearl shell, and silver plates, massive and sculptured as works of art. The table had no cloth, but the scarce and beautiful wood, defying the sailors’ whittles, was smoothed and polished by grease and bare arms, so that it was bright as a mirror. Taking down one of those high flagons which have gone from vogue since toping went out, he dived into the hole down the ladder like a powder-monkey into the magazine. In the hollow, he could be heard singing in a mellow voice: “And some are wrecked on th’ Indian coast, Thither by gain invited; Some are in smoke of battle lost, Whom a dance and lute delighted!” Although the flagon held a runlet’s eighteen gallons, he lugged it, frothing over, up the ladder like a puff of eider-down; that he had broached a cask the guest had heard, with ravishment, it gurgled so rapturously. The negress had braced herself by tightening a yellow zoner, or belt, which Christians are compelled to wear in a Mohammedan country; she put forth a strength which she might not be suspected of, and tilted the great kettle Over so as to spill some of its delicious medley into a ewer of gold, and carried this to the table as if it were an egg on a plate. “The sky bless you all!’ This seemed to be her con- ception of a grace. Instantly the air was transformed. What one had in- haled of a balm superior to Gilead’s was but a mean fore- taste of the perfume overwhelming the space. The guest clapped his hand, like those voyagers, who, sick of the bilge, tar and wet sailcloth odor, rejoice at the off-shore breeze from the spice islands. To be so enlivening, and at the same time so soothing, was a triumph of culinary (E) Gomicbdooks