THE WRECK
97
"I haven't decided yet. We pass Monghyr, Patna, Dinapore, Buxar, Ghazipur, and Benares, and we'll get off at one of these places." Some of the names were familiar to Kamala and some were not, but her imag- ination took fire as he reeled them off.
"What fun it'll be!" and she clapped her hands.
"The fun will come later," said Ramesh, "in the meantime we must see about feeding ourselves. You don't want meals from the crew's galley, I suppose !"
"Heaven help us! I should think not!" cried Kam- ala with a grimace.
Ramesh, "What'll we do then ?"
KamahL "I'll do the cooking."
Ramesh. "Can you cook?"
Kamala burst into laughter, "I don't know what you take me for? Can I cook? What a little noodle you must think me! Why, I did all the cooking at my uncle's."
Ramesh became apologetic; "I shouldn't have asked you that. Well, we had better make our prepara- tions now, hadn't we?" and he went off and soon re- turned with an iron cooking-stove; nor was that all There was a lad called Umesh on board belonging to the Kayastha or writer caste, inferior only to Brahmans in Bengal; him Ramesh engaged as Kamala's assist- ant in the kitchen in return for his fare to Benares and a daily wage.
"What are we to have for breakfast, Kamala?" he asked next
"What can you expect when you bring me only rice and pulse? We'll have kedgeree to-day."
In accordance with Kamala's directions Ramesh pro- cured some spices from the deck-hands. "What do you expect me to do with them now?" she asked, tickled by his ignorance of culinary matters. "I can't pound them without a pestle and a currystone, you know! You really are the limit!"
Digitized by Gopgle
