Chapter Twenty Seven.
Captain and Mrs To—Pork—We go to Plymouth and fall in with our old captain.
I immediately took leave of my family, and set off for Portsmouth, and in two days arrived at the Fountain Inn, where O’Brien was waiting to receive me. “Peter, my boy, I feel so much obliged to you, that if your uncle won’t go out of the world by fair means, I’ll pick a quarrel with him, and shoot him, on purpose that you may be a lord, as I am determined that you shall be. Now come up into my room, where we’ll be all alone, and I’ll tell you all about the ship and our new captain. In the first place, we’ll begin with the ship, as the most important personage of the two: she’s a beauty. I forget her name before she was taken, but the French know how to build ships better than keep them. She’s now called the Sanglier, which means a wild pig, and, by the powers! a pig ship she is, as you will hear directly. The captain’s name is a very short one, and wouldn’t please Mr Chucks, consisting only of two letters, T and O, which makes, To; his whole title is Captain John To. It would almost appear as if somebody had broken off the better half of his name, and only left him the commencement of it; but, however, it’s a handy name to sign when he pays off his ship. And now I’ll tell you what sort of a looking craft he is. He’s built like a Dutch schuyt, great breadth of beam, and very square tuck. He applied to have the quarter galleries enlarged in the two last ships he commanded. He weighs about eighteen stone, rather more than less. He is a good-natured sort of a chap, amazingly ungenteel, not much of an officer, not much of a sailor, but a devilish good hand at the trencher. But he’s only a part of the concern; he has his wife on board, who is a red-herring sort of a lady, and very troublesome to boot. What makes her still more annoying is, that she has a piano on board, very much out of tune, on which she plays very much out of time. Holystoning is music compared with her playing; even the captain’s spaniel howls when she comes to the high notes; but she affects the fine lady, and always treats the officers with music when they dine in the cabin, which makes them very glad to get out of it.”
“But, O’Brien, I thought wives were not permitted on board.”
“Very true, but there’s the worst part in the man’s character: he knows that he is not allowed to take his wife to sea, and, in consequence, he never says she is his wife, or presents her on shore to anybody. If any of the other captains ask how Mrs To is to-day, ‘Why,’ he replies, ‘pretty well, I thank you,’ but at the same time he gives a kind of smirk, as if to say, ‘She is not my wife;’ and although everybody knows that she is, yet he prefers that they should think otherwise, rather than be at the expense of keeping her on shore: for you know, Peter, that although there are regulations about wives, there are none with regard to other women.”
“But does his wife know this?” inquired I.
“I believe, from my heart, that she is a party to the whole transaction, for report says, that she would skin a flint if she could. She’s always trying for presents from the officers, and, in fact, she commands the ship.”
“Really, O’Brien, this is not a very pleasant prospect.”
“Whist! wait a little; now I come to the wind-up. This Captain To is very partial to pig’s mate, and we have as many live pigs on board as we have pigs of ballast. The first lieutenant is right mad about them. At the same time he allows no pigs but his own on board, that there may be no confusion. The manger is full of pigs; there are two cow-pens between the main-deck guns, drawn from the dock-yard, and converted into pig-pens. The two sheep-pens amidships are full of pigs, and the geese and turkey-coops are divided off into apartments for four sows in the family way. Now, Peter, you see there’s little or no expense in keeping pigs on board of a large frigate, with so much pay-soup and whole peas for them to eat, and this is the reason why he keeps them, for the devil a bit of any other stock has he on board. I presume he means to milk one of the old sows for breakfast when the ship sails. The first thing that he does in the morning, is to go round to his pigs with the butcher, feeling one, scratching the dirty ears of another, and then he classes them—his bacon pigs, his porkers, his breeding sows, and so on. The old boar is still at the stables of this inn, but I hear he is to come on board with the sailing orders; but he is very savage, and is therefore left on shore to the very last moment. Now really, Peter, what with the squealing of the pigs and his wife’s piano we are almost driven mad. I don’t know which is the worst of the two; if you go aft you hear the one, if you go forward you, hear the other, by way of variety, and that, they say, is charming. But, is it not shocking that such a beautiful frigate should be turned into a pig-sty, and that her main-deck should smell worse than a muck-heap?”