According to Stephen Crane's naturalist story, 'The Open Boat', the term that is repeated, "sacred cheese" invokes the idea of seeming powerless and this idea is in keeping with the theme of the story that humans are caught in a trap.
The repeated term 'sacred cheese' refers to food which a hungry man can see but is not allowed to eat and in the same vein, the narrator's ship gets shipwrecked and is unable to get to the land which shows that he is powerless as he can see land but cannot get there.
