Then Smallbones stopped, and thought a little. "I wonder whether he bee'd dead, as I thought. Master came on board last night without no one knowing nothing about it, and he might have brought the dog with him, if so be he came to again. I won't believe that he's hal-together not to be made away with, for how come his eye out? Well, I don't care, I'm a good Christian, and may I be swamped if I don't try what he's made of yet! First time we cuts up beef, I'll try and chop your tail, anyhow, that I will, if I am hung for it."
Smallbones regained his determination. He set about laying the things for breakfast, and when they were ready he went up to the quarter-deck, reporting the same to Mr Vanslyperken, who had expected to see him frightened out of his wits, and concluding his speech by saying, "If you please, sir, the dog be in the cabin, all right; I said as how I never kilt your dog, nor buried him neither."
"The dog in the cabin!" exclaimed Mr Vanslyperken, with apparent astonishment. "Why, how the devil could he have come there?"
"He cummed off, I suppose, sir, same way as you did, without nobody knowing nothing about it," drawled out Smallbones, who then walked away.
In the meantime the corporal had been picked up, and the men were attempting to recover him. Smallbones went forward to see what had become of him, and learnt how it was that he was insensible.
"Well, then," thought Smallbones, "it may have been all the same with the dog, and I believe there's humbug in it, for if the dog had made his appearance, as master pretends he did, all of a sudden, he'd a been more frightened than me."
So reasoned Smallbones, and he reasoned well. In the meantime the corporal opened his eyes, and gradually returned to his senses, and then for the first time, the ship's company, who were all down at their breakfast, demanded of Smallbones the reason of the corporal's conduct.
"Why," replied Smallbones, "because that 'ere beast, Snarleyyow, be come back again, all alive, a'ter being dead and buried--he's in the cabin now--that's all."
"That's all!" exclaimed one. "All!" cried another. "The devil!" said a third.
"I said as how it would be," said Obadiah Coble--"that dog is no dog, as sure as I sit here."