Characters: THE COOK

Main characters we meet in the story under analysis are the cook, Bill Foster and Joseph Meek. There are also some secondary characters among which one can mention Emily Foster, Charlie Epps, Ted Jones, George Hall, Bob Law etc.

By all means, THE COOK is a protagonist of the story. The narrator reveals him by means of narrative description with explicit judgement as in the following example: 

He was a silly, pasty-faced sort o' chap, always giving hisself airs about eddication to sailormen who didn't believe in it. 

From the both fact and judgement we derive the impression of the main character as a weak, boastful und dishonest man who doesn`t think about the consequences of his lie. 

When the narrator informs us that just afterwards the Bill`s falling out the foretop the cook invented a story about the "second sight", we come to share his disrespect and disapproval of the character`s behaviour. To create the humorous effect here the author uses hyperbole based on personification: 

I never see a man so surprised as the cook was. His eyes was nearly starting out of 'is head

and enlardes the idea with the phraselogical unit and epithet: 

but by the time the other chaps 'ad picked Bill up and asked 'im whether he was hurt, cook 'ad pulled 'imself together agin and was giving himself such airs it was perfectly sickening.

The dramatic irony as the way to show the discrepancy between what characters thinks and what the reader knows to be true is shown in the following passage: 

'It's a wonderful gift, cookie,' ses Charlie Epps. All of 'em thought the same, not knowing wot a fust-class liar the cook was, 

and he sat there and lied to 'em till he couldn't 'ardly speak, he was so 'oarse, 

where "a fust-class liar", "he was so 'oarse" are epithets and "till he couldn't 'ardly speak" is a litote. 

To emphasise the cook`s untidiness the narrator implies the parenthesis: 

He kissed 'is dirty paw--which is more than I should 'ave liked to 'ave done it if it 'ad been mine--and waved it". 

In this example one should also pay attention to the use of epithet "dirty paw", where instead of word "hand" we come upon its colloquial variant(the case of dysphemism).

The narrator uses the zeugma: 

It took 'im three days and a silver watch-chain to persuade the cook,

 in order to highlight character`s pettiness.

Judging from cook`s speech full with colloqualisms (presented by graphons) one can see his belonging to the lower social class and lack of education: 

- I never was on a ship afore with such a lot of unfortunit men aboard. Never. There's two pore fellers wot'll be dead corpses inside o' six months. 

Still it`s rather confusing to say whether direct speech was the same in the original conversation, taking into consideration that the story wholly is told by the  speaker of cockney dialect. 

One more thing worth saying is that throughout the whole story the cook is purposefully not called by name. It goes without saying this fact means that there are a lot of such fellows who flatter themselves being nobody.
All in all, we can say that the narrator is quite subjective towards the main character.