The idea of eating his dog's tail increased the choler of Mr Vanslyperken. With looks of malignant vengeance he ordered Smallbones out of the cabin.
"Shall I shy this here overboard, sir?" said Smallbones, taking up the dog's tail, which lay on the table.
"Drop it, sir," roared Vanslyperken.
Smallbones walked away, grinning with delight, but his face was turned from Mr Vanslyperken.
The corporal returned, swabbed up the blood, and reported that the bleeding had stopped. Mr Vanslyperken had no further orders for him--he wished to be left alone. He leaned his head upon his hand, and remained for some time in a melancholy reverie, with his eyes fixed upon the tail, which lay before him--that tail, now a "bleeding piece of earth," which never was to welcome him with a wag again. What passed in Vanslyperken's mind during this time, it would be too difficult and too long to repeat, for the mind flies over time and space with the rapidity of the lightning's flash. At last he rose, took up the dog's tail, put it into his pocket, went on deck, ordered his boat, and pulled on shore.
Chapter XXXVII
In which Mr Vanslyperken drives a very hard bargain.
We will be just and candid in our opinion relative to the historical facts which we are now narrating. Party spirit, and various other feelings, independent of misrepresentation do, at the time, induce people to form their judgment, to say the best, harshly, and but too often, incorrectly. It is for posterity to calmly weigh the evidence handed down, and to examine into the merits of a case divested of party bias. Actuated by these feelings, we do not hesitate to assert, that, in the point at question, Mr Vanslyperken had great cause for being displeased; and that the conduct of Moggy Salisbury, in cutting off the tail of Snarleyyow was, in our opinion, not justifiable.
There is a respect for property, inculcated and protected by the laws, which should never be departed from; and, whatever may have been the aggressions on the part of Mr Vanslyperken, or of the dog, still a tail is a tail, and whether mangy or not, is bond fide a part of the living body; and this aggression must inevitably come under the head of the cutting and maiming act, which act, however, it must, with the same candour which will ever guide our pen, be acknowledged, was not passed until a much later period than that to the history of which our narrative refers.