Jack Countenances the Water

For your collective titilation, and by popular demand, the following is from the chapter entitled "Onions", from the work in progress that is "Aboard the Ship the Sunday Morning":

Jack may have countenanced in his consciousness the onions and their quantity, indeed, he may even have been amused by them. The dirty water, however, for it was nothing if not dirty, leapt to his mind’s forefront, shoving aside any notion of onions, or anything else, vegetable or otherwise or indeed the swabbing of decks, for that matter, following Fat Pete’s addition, and in spite of Clancy’s reiteration. Gladly such states of single-mindedness didn’t tend to linger too long in Jack’s well-defined skull, but, perhaps even more gladly, major realisations reached during these states, as we shall call them, were moderately frequently remembered. Little Jack the scullion reached the following realisation: “The water acquired in Penitence at Pig Gantry’s insistence, and I couldn’t be more certain that coincidence isn’t so much as a shadow of a factor in this matter, is so dirty as to be, at very best, infected, but quite possibly poisoned in addition” Jack, wide-eyed to allow as much light as could be harnessed in the gloom of the galley to assist in thought processes pertaining to survival, reached the following conclusion: “By all possible means, I shall avoid drinking the water in question.”

This would prove to be more complicated than Jack might have hoped it would, but until he felt particularly thirsty he continued in his conversation with the other galley-folk without mentioning the seemingly fetid water.

Allium cepa

It can be assumed safely that the onion has contributed greatly to human diets for many a long year; indeed, there is strong evidence that, in the Egypt of antiquity, it was a sacred root, on a par with cats in religious significance. Unlike the cat, however, it was probably eaten. It wasn’t until 1493, though, that the great Christopher Columbus introduced Allium cepa to the Americas, specifically Haiti. Since then, the onion has grown to be one of the continent’s more widely used vegetables. Although onion syrup is undoubtedly a useful remedy for coughs and colds, and reduces the risk of contracting various cancers, it is doubtful that Pig Gantry had this in mind when he decided on the course of action upon which he decided, that of bringing eighty sacks if there’s any of onions aboard this three-masted schooner, a sensitive and above all fragile lady of an ocean going vessel.