"To be sure I did," rejoined Drainings, "as distinctly as I now see my thumb—none of the cleanest, by the way."
"The devil?" said Lennox, starting up; "what was it like, Mr Drainings?"
"Why, as like the little heathen god brought on board by Quacco there, as you can fancy any thing."
"Oh—oh—oh," again resounded from all hands.
"But it could not be he," at length struck in the black serjeant. "It could not be he, seeing he is safe stow below de heel of de bowsprit dere."
"Heaven grant it may be so," whined Dogvane.
"If it really be as Quacco says," said Wadding, in a sympathizing tone, "why, then, I will believe it is all fancy—all a barn."
Here the black serjeant, in great tribulation, rose to go forward, evidently with a desire to reconnoitre whether the graven image was really there in the body or no. After a long search, he came back and sat down, blank and stupified, on the spot where he had risen from.
"And pray, Mr Drainings, when did you see this curious appearance?" persisted Lennox.
"At the wery instant of time," drawled Cookey, with his arms crossed, and his hands stuck into the open bosom of his greasy shirt, that had once been red flannel, and with a short black stump of a pipe in his mouth, from which he puffed out a cloud between every word, "at the wery instant of time, by the glass, that Serjeant Quacco there mended the fire."