My Cannibal Cook.

By Mollie Lett.

HE appeared quite suddenly at the side of the track, as I was walking home through the scrub, one morning; and he followed me in silence to my palm-built, palm-thatched house.

While I breakfasted, he inspected the premises, carefully and critically, and eventually he announced that he had come to cook for me.

A long succession of soi-disant cooks had persuaded me that nothing could be much worse than their dirty incom petence. Yet, with the incurable op timism which keeps white residents struggling on in Papua, I hoped, always, that the next one might be better.

The new arrival looked comparatively intelligent for a Papuan bushman. So, sacking the existing failure, I showed him the kitchen and its utensils, and gave him instructions for lunch.

It was not a success. Sweet potatoes boiled in a billy, and allowed to grow cold in their water, do not make a tempting meal on a hot, tropical day: and even the impressive way in which he fished them out with his fingers, and laid them on a plate, did little to make them really appetising.

However, he was no worse than what I had been suffering for many months, and I kept him on.

He reached his apotheosis some weeks later, when four guests arrived unexpectedly for dinner. I had trained him a little, by this time, and I felt fairly confident as I handed him a sup ply of tinned soup, tinned fish, tinned meat, tinned vegetables and tinned

plum-pudding.

A variety of loud noises from the kitchen gave evidence that he was busy; and when the sounds died down I called for dinner. He brought it in a four-quart saucepan. Soup, pudding, fish, vegetables and meat had all been dumped in together, a little water added, and the mixture boiled and stirred to an incredibly revolting mess.

And he was hurt because we dined on biscuits and cheese!

He stayed with me for nearly a year and, finally, left as a protest against my introduction of a cat to the house.

Almost daily incidents had shown me that the cat and he were not entirely at one. But I did not realise the depth of their antagonism until he approached me one evening, snorting with indigna tion, and carrying a half-chewed rat in his hand. He explained that this was not the first time that the abominable cat had robbed him of a valued deli cacy, and laid down an ultimatum that either he or the cat must go.

I retained the cat.