The captain was then on the poop talking to Mr Saunders about something or other in which they both seemed deeply interested, the one sniffing and twitching his long nose about, and the other wagging his red beard as he moved his jaws in talking. I was just above their heads in the mizzen-top, my favourite retreat of an evening, whither I had taken up a book to read, although I could barely distinguish the print by this time, daylight had disappeared so quickly on the sun’s sinking in the deep astern; when, all at once, a violent squealing and grunting broke out from the long-boat, sufficient for more than a herd of porkers all in their last agony, instead of its coming from one or even all three of the pigs Captain Gillespie had stowed there, fattening them up until he thought them big enough to kill for the table.
“Who the dickens is that troubling my pigs?” roared the captain, clutching hold of the brass rail of the poop in front of him, and squinting forwards as well as he could in the dim light to where the clew of the main-sail just lifting disclosed the fore part of the deck-house with the long-boat on top. “None of your sky-larking there, d’ye hear? Leave ’em alone!”
But, there was no one to be seen either on top of the deck-house or in the long-boat, although the squealing still continued.
“D’ye hear me there, forrud?” shouted Captain Gillespie again in a voice of thunder, having now worked himself up into one of his tornado-like rages. “Leave those pigs alone, I tell ye!”
“Sure, sorr, there’s nobody there,” said Tim Rooney, who was on the main-deck below, just under the break of the poop. “There’s divil a sowl botherin’ the blissid pigs, sorr, as ye can say for y’rsilf. Faix, they’re ownly contrary a bit, sorr, an’ p’raps onaisy in their moind!”
“Nonsense, man!” cried Captain Gillespie stamping his foot. “It is some of those mutinous rascals carrying on their games, I—I know! Just look, will ye, bosun?”
“There ar’n’t a sowl thare, I tell ye, sorr,” protested Tim, rather a bit vexed at his word being doubted, as he turned to go forward where the row was still going on. “Ain’t I jist come from there, sorr, an’ can’t I say now wid me own eyes there ain’t nobody not nigh the long-boat nor the pigs neither—bad cess to ’em!”
He muttered the last words below his breath, and getting up into the main-rigging he climbed half-way up the shrouds, so as to be able to drop from thence on to the deck-house, this being his quickest mode of reaching the roof of that structure; and from thence, as he knew, he would of course be able to see right into the long-boat as well as inspect its four-footed tenants.
“There’s not a sowl in the boat or near it, sorr, at all, at all, cap’en dear, barrin’ the pigs sure, as I towld ye,” he repeated on getting so far; and he was just proceeding to lower himself down to the top of the deck-house by a loose rope that was hanging from aloft, when he swung himself back into the rigging in alarm as a dark body jumped out of the long-boat right across his face, uttering the terrified ejaculation, “Murther in Irish! Howly Moses, what is that?”
It was one of the pigs, which, giving vent to a most diabolical yell, appeared to leap from the long-boat deliberately over the port side of the ship into the sea, sinking immediately with a stifled grunt, alongside.