Chapter 139: The Cook's Assistant (Continued)

How could poor Mao Shisan have ever eaten sweets? In the past, he had chewed on sorghum stalks and risked his life with his friends to get honeycombs. He had never even dared to dream of malt sugar. The first bite seemed to make his pores open up with sweetness. He closed his eyes and sent spoonful after spoonful of sugar porridge into his mouth. All of this was like a story. Yes, it was like a story his stepfather had promised, where someone accidentally stumbled into a fairy world, and the fairies treated him to a feast he had never heard of. When he returned, several hundred years had passed. What was the ending? That lucky person must have gone back to the fairy world.

After breakfast, the sky was bright. The fat cook went down to the cabin to tend to his bean sprouts. Most of the time, this was the only vegetable. To vary the taste, there were yellow bean sprouts, green bean sprouts, and sprouted beans. The two young men, sweating profusely, were cleaning the kitchen and utensils. Then they used a hand pump to bring up seawater to wash the lunch boxes. The cleaned lunch boxes were then wiped with fresh water. Fresh water was precious during a voyage, and the quartermaster had a quota for how many lunch boxes could be washed with how much fresh water.

But now on the Yalu River, it didn’t matter. The cooking utensils also had to be cleaned. Steel things were afraid of rust. If there was any rust, it had to be carefully polished off, especially in the corners, using a special small cotton swab to rub it bit by bit. After washing, it had to be wiped until there was not a single drop of water, and then oiled with a piece of half-cooked pork fat. The pickle jars, salted egg baskets, rice bags, and unused coal in the kitchen all had to be returned to their original places. There could not be a single trace of oil, everything had to be shiny, and even the spoons in the spice jars had to be facing the same direction. After the cleaning was finished, the first mate in charge of ship’s affairs would come to inspect.

After the inspection was over, they began to boil water. Fu Ji would add lime juice to the water according to a certain ratio. At first, Mao Shisan thought it was to cover up the strange smell of the water that had been stored for too long, but Fu Ji said no. The lime juice contained a kind of elixir that prevented sickness. If the water was too hot, it would destroy the good things in the juice, so the boiled water had to be cooled down, but not too cold. When it reached a drinkable temperature, the warm boiled water would be poured in.

Mao Shisan was responsible for running errands with the mixed water, carrying it bucket by bucket to the insulated buckets on the deck and in the cabins. When they were docked, the supply of fresh water was unlimited, and you could drink as much as you wanted.

“The Chief really treats the soldiers like lords,” Fu Ji whispered to Mao Shisan.

After delivering the water, Mao Shisan clutched his stomach and ducked into the open-air toilet at the bow of the ship. He was already wearing thin clothes. As soon as he pulled down his pants, the cold wind blew from all directions, making him shiver. His feces froze in mid-air and made a thudding sound when it hit the thin ice. After finishing as quickly as possible and luxuriously cleaning himself with paper, Mao Shisan was pulling up his pants to get a water bucket when the first mate called out to him, “I’m watching you. Why didn’t you wash your hands after using the toilet and then go touch the kitchen utensils?”

Perhaps having finally caught a culprit in the act, the first mate, who was on duty as the officer of the watch, began a long lecture on the regulations. Some of the familiar sailors behind him made faces at Mao Shisan. It was only when he got to the punishment that the second mate remembered that the person in front of him was not a member of the ship’s crew. “Get lost. Next time I catch you, I’ll let you have a taste of the cat-o’-nine-tails.”

Mao Shisan dared not talk back at all. He ran back to the toilet and, as Fu Ji had taught him, spent half a minute carefully washing each finger with soap. The clear water was icy cold, and the wind was biting. By the time Mao Shisan rushed back to the kitchen, he was half-dead from the cold. He hugged the reluctant Oscar and warmed himself by the stove for a long time before he felt the ice shell on his body melt. “Home is still the best,” Mao Shisan moaned comfortably.

“Let’s go to the sauna today,” Fu Ji had also finished cleaning up.

“No, I’m not going…” As soon as he heard “sauna,” Mao Shisan’s face turned bitter. “I’ll lose my life.”

“This is a military regulation. Do you dare not to go?” Fu Ji knew that as soon as he brought out the “military regulations,” Mao Shisan would immediately surrender.

“Alright, alright, I’ll go, I’ll go.”

The sauna on Duozhi Island was built under the personal supervision of Xue Ziliang. It was a simple structure of dry-laid stones. The special reconnaissance team often used saunas to train their soldiers and improve their resistance during their winter training on Jeju Island.

Since the Haitian was going to be overhauled on Duozhi Island for a period of time, giving everyone a sauna was also a form of “exercise.” So this bathroom was opened.

Mao Shisan screamed as he was once again lifted by several lewdly smiling sailors, who chanted “one, two, three” and threw him into the icy river water.

There was still floating ice on the Yalu River in early spring, and the water was bone-chillingly cold. The moment Mao Shisan fell into the river, he almost retracted his penis into his stomach.

This “bathing” of being steamed in a stone house first and then thrown into icy water happened every two or three days. The first time he enjoyed this treatment, Mao Shisan thought it was a “hazing” or “beating” for “joining the group,” but when he saw that everyone on the ship, from the “Chief” Xue Weini down to Fu Ji who worked with him in the kitchen, did the same, he realized that this was the “Da Ao people’s” usual way of bathing.

“Is this called bathing? It’s more like torture,” he would mutter every time he climbed out of the river. No matter how many times he washed, he could never get used to this “punishment,” although now he was not as afraid of the cold as the first time.

“You’ll get used to the cold slowly,” Fu Ji threw him a towel and a coat. “You’ll know the benefits after you wash more.”

Mao Shisan didn’t know what the “benefits” of being steamed first and then iced were. He was about the same age as Fu Ji, but he also knew that “the first to enter the school is the senior,” not to mention that the other party was a real soldier wearing a proper “uniform” and eating a salary, which was much better than him, a “black household” who had been taken in. So he never dared to refute his companion’s words.

Mao Shisan followed Fu Ji’s example, first drying his whole body with a towel until it was warm, and then putting on the old uniform that was originally destined to become a cannon-wiping cloth. This cotton uniform, which was prepared for wiping the cannon bore, was already worn to rags, not as good as the thick and sturdy, furry coats that Fu Ji and the others wore. So the ship’s quartermaster gave him another set of refugee cotton-padded clothes, which he wore over the uniform as a coverall.

The clothes were not thick, but for Mao Shisan, who had not worn decent cotton clothes for many years, it was warm to the heart. Strangely enough, after taking these baths frequently, his whole body felt comfortable, and his bones and muscles also felt relaxed. His body was always warm. He didn’t know what the reason was.

He buttoned up his clothes and asked Fu Ji, “Is it almost time to make lunch?”

Fu Ji laughed, “All you know is eating. You won’t die from overeating!” He waved his hand, “Let’s go. We’ll wash the vegetables. We also need to do some preparation for dinner.”

As soon as he heard that it was time to start cooking, Mao Shisan followed him happily.

Their job was to wash the vegetables. The Fubo Army attached great importance to the supply of vegetables and would try to supply fresh vegetables whenever possible. The only vegetables that could be stored on the Haitian were potatoes and onions, and they had been consumed almost completely these days.

Therefore, the vegetables they used while docked on Duozhi Island were requisitioned from Zhenjiang Fortress and the nearby garrisons under the rule of the Later Jin.

In the icy and snowy bitter cold land, the only vegetables that could be supplied in winter were stored Chinese cabbage and radishes. Although the local garrison received an order to “do their best to supply,” they really couldn’t supply anything good. Fortunately, for the sailors who had been drifting at sea for a long time and eating bean sprouts and potatoes every day, Chinese cabbage and radishes were also delicacies.

On the shore of Duozhi Island, a temporary jetty was set up in the upstream waters of the Haitian. Usually, the ship took water and washed here. There was a temporary water intake point here with a filter to filter the river water.

The vegetables had just been transported from Zhenjiang Fortress a few days ago. In addition to Chinese cabbage and radishes, sometimes there was also frozen game such as roe deer and deer. Fu Ji often had to clean and butcher these “meat carcasses” on the river beach. Mao Shisan had also helped. When he was sitting on the jetty washing vegetables, the Eight Banners cavalry patrolling the riverbank were clearly visible. This was the first time he had observed these enemies so closely and so calmly.

Mao Shisan had never seen a real Tartar before, but he had heard many stories about how cruel and ruthless they were from his stepfather, the military households, and the people who had fled from the Later Jin. The fear of the Tartars was deeply imprinted in Mao Shisan’s mind. When the Haitian first docked at Duozhi Island and the Tartar cavalry came to investigate, Mao Shisan was almost scared to the point of wetting his pants.

When he heard that the Haitian was originally in the Yalu River, not far from the Tartars’ Zhenjiang Fortress, Mao Shisan even had the thought of dying. Wasn’t this walking right into a trap? It was a pity that he hadn’t had enough to eat!

Unexpectedly, after a battle on the river, more than two hundred Tartar cavalry were routed. The whole ship feasted on the meat of the dead horses they left behind for several days. And after the battle, the Haitian even specifically weighed anchor and went to Zhenjiang Fortress to find trouble with the Tartars. A barrage of cannon fire made the Tartar defending general come out to sue for peace. From then on, Mao Shisan felt that the Eight Banners were not so scary. They would also die if they were hit by cannonballs. If many of them died, they would also have to flee for their lives. And they had to submit after a defeat—wasn’t the ship’s vegetables and meat now almost all supplied by them?

Every time new vegetables were delivered, they were first inspected by the ship’s medic. Although Zhenjiang Fortress sometimes sent some dried mushrooms and other things, the medic never allowed them to eat them. They were all thrown directly into the furnace of the sauna as firewood. This made Mao Shisan feel very heartbroken. In the past, if he could get some mushrooms to cook soup, it would be a top-notch delicacy.

The two of them chatted idly while washing the dirt off the Chinese cabbage and radishes. It seemed that there were especially many vegetables to wash today, and on the beach, there was something rarely seen on ordinary days: a whole slaughtered cow.

“The Tartar official is so generous today!”

“Generous my ass. They don’t dare not to give it. Otherwise, we would have kicked Zhenjiang Fortress over, and even if the Tartar official could escape with his life, he would still lose his head,” Fu Ji said, shaking his head. “Chief Huang is coming back from their capital soon. Chief Xue said he wants to give him a welcome reception and a犒劳 (reward/feast) for everyone. We’re going back soon.”