"'You are very obliging, brother Grab,' said our friend, calmly—then to the bench, 'may it please your honour, I am now in a position to save you farther trouble, by proving, on the most undeniable evidence, by a most disinterested witness, that the vessel in court, purporting to be "the Stormy Peterel of St John's, New Brunswick"'—here Jonathan's jaw fell—'is neither more nor less'—the Yankee's eyes seemed like to start from their sockets—'than the American brig Alconda, off and from New York.'
"'Who the hell has peached?' screamed the Yankee, looking round fiercely among his own men, and utterly shoved off his balance!
"'Silence,' sang out the crier.
"'The hand of heaven is in this iniquitous matter, please your honour.' Here he produced the tin box, and took out the Alconda's manifest and register, and confronting them with the forged papers belonging to the Stormy Peterel, the trick was instantly proved, and the vessel condemned—Jonathan, as he swung out of court, exclaiming, amidst showers of tobacco juice, 'Pretty considerably damned and con-damned, and all by a bloody sharkfish. If this ben't, by G—, the most active and unnatural piece of cruelty—may I be physicked all my natural days with hot oil and fish-hooks!'"
So far, so true; but Dennis, honest man, superadded a few flourishes of his own, one of which was, that the spine of the shark was extracted, and preserved in the captain's cabin, hung up to the roof; and that one of the quartermasters, "a most religious charackter," could notice certain vibrations and twistings of the vertebrae, whenever any vessel with false papers was in the vicinity—even when she could not be seen from the masthead.
"Why, it must have been a divining rod—a second rod of Moses," said I, laughing.
"And you have said it with your own beautiful mug, Benjie Brail," quoth Dennis Donovan.
"Gammon," said I Benjie.