Read Online Ice Brothers by Sloan Wilson - Free Book Online

Paul said.
    â€œWe don’t have a skipper aboard this hooker yet, and we don’t rightly have an engineer, but we got the damnedest, finest cook I ever seen afloat. They say he used to be some kind of a real fancy hotel chef before he joined up, and I believe it. He’s been baking this morning and I can hardly wait to see what he’s going to come up with this time.”
    Green said nothing but listened attentively and smiled. As Farmer led the way to the galley in the forecastle, Green followed, hitting his head on the hatch on the way out and laughing ruefully at his own ungainliness.
    The forecastle was a low-ceilinged, V-shaped compartment about thirty feet long with three tiers of bunks on each side for the thirty enlisted men who would make up the crew, and a long, V-shaped table in the middle. Around this table about a dozen young seamen now sat, greedily grabbing fresh blueberry muffins from large platters. In the door to the adjoining galley a short man about forty-five years old stood in a white apron. He wore a tall white chef’s hat, which even Paul knew to be outlandish aboard a trawler or a Coast Guard cutter. When he saw the officers he grinned in a curiously obsequious but sly way and in a thick foreign accent said, “What will it be, gentlemen? Blueberry muffins, apple cake or cherry tarts? Don’t tell me. I’ll fix you a selection.”
    Without being asked, a seaman poured coffee from a big pot on the table into white mugs for the two ensigns and the warrant boatswain.
    â€œWe need more milk, Cookie,” he called.
    â€œGet it yourself,” Cookie replied haughtily as he appeared with a tray of pastries which would have graced the fanciest of restaurants.
    â€œI never seen anything like this aboard any vessel of any description in my whole life,” Farmer marveled as he helped himself to a cherry tart. “Where did you learn to cook like this, Cookie?”
    â€œWhere?” Cookie replied, drawing himself up to his full height of five feet, six inches, which bent his chef’s hat against the overhead. “Where did I learn my profession? Why in the best hotels of Switzerland, of course, in the Cordon Bleu in Paris, and at the Ritz-Carlton here in Boston. And after all that, this Coast Guard makes me a third-class cook! ”
    â€œNow don’t you worry about that, Cookie,” Farmer said. “As soon as we get us a skipper aboard here, we’ll all recommend you for a promotion just as quick as the regulations allow. As far as I can see, you ought to be a regular admiral of cooks if they rate them up that high.”
    â€œThank you, sir,” Cookie replied with an almost Oriental bow. “I shall always try to please.” Still bowing and smiling in his sly, obsequious way, he backed into his galley and disappeared.
    The enlisted men had fallen silent at the approach of the officers, but now a coxswain who looked and talked like a bright college boy, said to Paul, “Sir, are you going to be stationed aboard here?”
    â€œIt looks that way.”
    â€œAre we going to Greenland?”
    â€œI guess that’s supposed to be a secret, isn’t it?”
    â€œWell, we figure from the way this ship is painted and the way they’re beefing up the bow with steel plates and all, it sure doesn’t look like we’re headed for the jungles of New Guinea,” the coxswain said and everyone laughed.
    â€œYou might say that,” Farmer said, “but the way the Coast Gad does things, they might send an icebreaker to New Guinea after all.”
    More laughter.
    â€œSir,” the coxswain continued to Paul, “did you see the news this morning about Greenland? It was in the Record. ”
    â€œNo. What is it?”
    â€œThe Northern Light , sir, she captured a German weather ship just five miles off the east coast of Greenland. They had a regular battle, but when our planes came in, the Germans gave