Chapter 25 - 10: Kitchen
The kitchen was even darker than the bilge.
Upon entering, apart from a little light shining in from the doorway allowing barely discernible vision, the depths were almost completely pitch black.
Aside from the wooden racks piled on either side, only the tall and blurry silhouette of the stove was visible.
Fortunately, the lighting problem in the bilge not only troubled Chen Zhou but was also criticized by the sailors.
To avoid cooking in the dark, they hung an oil lamp behind the kitchen door. The lamp was woven with iron bars, with a hook at the top that could hang on an iron ring on the ceiling for easy removal.
But the lamp’s position was rather eerie.
Pushing the door open, the view towards the back of the door was mostly blocked by the door panel, making only the upper third of the oil lamp visible in the murky environment, waiting to be discovered like in a game of hide and seek.
If it weren’t for the big dog rushing into the kitchen too quickly, squeezing the door hard and pushing the board against the lamp to hit the lower edge of the oil lamp, emitting a sound, Chen Zhou might not have found this lamp right away.
Watching the dog happily run into the dark depths, heading straight toward something that looked like a barrel, Chen Zhou quickly spoke up to stop it.
However, the creature’s eyes were red from hunger, and before Chen Zhou’s words could leave his throat, it nimbly leapt up, using its head to knock off the barrel lid, then stretched its neck over the barrel wall to grab a piece of round cake-like item from inside, throwing it to the ground, pinning it down with its paw before devouring voraciously.
One couldn’t exactly take back what was already being eaten; understanding the dog’s eagerness to eat after a day and night of hunger, Chen Zhou naturally let it enjoy its buffet.
Moreover, he now had no time to mind the big dog because he faced a new awkward problem—how to light the lamp?
Logically speaking, a kitchen needing to cook food should certainly have tools for lighting fires, but the awkwardness lay exactly here.
𝙧𝙚𝙚𝔀𝒆𝓫𝓷𝙤𝓿𝒆𝙡.𝒄𝙤𝓶
Since Chen Zhou didn’t know what ignition devices were generally used in 17th-century Europe, he couldn’t quickly search based on the characteristics of the tools.
The whole kitchen wasn’t particularly large or small.
Besides the dim lighting, there were numerous containers of various shapes, shelves high above, cabinets below, large barrels stuffed into corners with smaller boxes stacked on top; finding ignition tools in this junkyard-like mess seemed as futile as searching for a needle in a haystack.
Without setting a specific target, purely relying on blind luck would require at least an hour even under favorable circumstances.
Thus, Chen Zhou had to resort to elimination methods, comparing and judging through his knowledge step by step.
He first ruled out electronic lighters and matches; these fire-starting tools were absolutely impossible to appear on the ship.
Then he ruled out old-fashioned kerosene lighters using gears and flint for friction ignition.
In 1659, European watchmakers had impressive skills, indeed possessing the technology to create gear friction ignition devices.
However, the complex craftsmanship and manufacturing period of these fire-starting tools were no less than pocket watches, making them costly, undoubtedly becoming luxuries popular among aristocrats, absolutely impossible to appear in the kitchen of a slave ship’s lower deck.
Eliminating these extremely improbable fire-starting tools, within Chen Zhou’s limited scope of knowledge, the only tools he could think of were flint, fire bow, and the more advanced fire striker, tinder, and flint set.
Among these ignition tools, strike ignition flint was the oldest and most primitive, disappearing after the Stone Age.
Flint was afraid of moisture, and the complex manufacturing process limited its ignition duration, making it unsuitable for ship use.
Fire bows ignited quickly but took up significant space, were inconvenient to carry, easily affected by the environment, and similarly unsuitable for sea conditions.
The most likely tool used by sailors would be the fire striker set.
Thanks to frequent forum browsing and watching videos in his downtime, in a survival gear streamer’s sales video, Chen Zhou had seen the traditional fire striker’s appearance.
It was an iron piece slightly larger than a palm in the shape of an isosceles trapezoid, with the bottom edge polished into a blade and the top edge wrapped in leather to protect fingers from injury during vigorous striking.
Typically, fire strikers are placed together with flint and tinder, forming an inseparable ignition trio, indispensable to each other.
Fearing loss, sailors might pocket them or store them in a box.
Recalling the features of the fire striker, Chen Zhou began searching the small cabinets and wooden racks within a small radius around the oil lamp.
Soon, he discovered within a small box on a wooden rack beside the stove what seemed to be the fire striker set, including an elliptical iron piece tied with a knot, a heavy flint, and a bundle of dry string emitting a greasy smell.
Picking up the flint, he tried scraping it forcefully against the iron piece, and amidst the intense friction of the fire striker’s side against the flint, a dazzling spark suddenly flashed across the dim kitchen.
Smelling the pungent smoke, Chen Zhou grinned.
"Hey, it works!"
Quickly pinching the dry string bundle into a little nest, with one hand clutching the fire striker and the other gripping the flint, he began striking fiercely.
After dozens of attempts, the many and quite beautiful sparks merely floated across the surface of the fire striker, vanishing instantly, far from igniting the string bundle, not even dropping downward.
Holding the heated fire striker in confusion, Chen Zhou pondered.
"Is it because this thing is too old, or is it because I’m using it wrong, why won’t it ignite?"
Taking a short break, he concluded that he hadn’t tried enough or struck hard enough, so he embarked on a new round of striking.