"Do it on purpose?" rejoins Chip. "My eye! I drop it light, light—just so;" and here he thundered the iron earring down on the deck once more, missing the toe for the second time by a hairbreadth, and only through Palmy's activity in withdrawing it.
At this Palmy's pent-up wrath fairly exploded, and he smote Chip incontinently over the pate with his iron marlinspike, who returned with his wooden mallet, and the action then began in earnest—the combatants rolling over and over on the deck, kicking and spurring, and biting, and bucking each other with their heads like maniacs, or two monkeys in the hydrophobia, until the row attracted the attention of the rest of the crew, and they were separated.
*****
I had risen early the next morning, and was wearying most particularly for the breakfast hour, when Quacco, who was, as usual, head cook and captain's steward, came to me. "Massa, you never see soch an a face as Mr Lennox hab dis morning."
"Why, what is wrong with him, Quacco?"
"I tink he mos hab sleep in de moon, sir."
"Sleep in the moon! A rum sort of a lodging, Quacco. What do you mean?"
"I mean he mos hab been sleep in de moonlight on deck, widout no cover at all, massa." And so we found he had, sure enough, and the consequence was, a swelled face, very much like the moon herself in a fog, by the way, as if she had left her impress on the poor fellow's mug; "her moonstruck child;" but I have no time for poetry. It looked more like erysipelas than any thing else, and two days elapsed before the swelling subsided; during the whole of which the poor fellow appeared to me—but it might have been fancy—more excited and out of the way than I had seen him since the prison scene at Havanna.
Can it be possible that the planet really does exercise such influences as we read of, thought I? At any rate, I now for the first time knew the literal correctness of the beautiful Psalm—"The sun shall not smite thee by day, nor the moon by night."
We were now a week at sea; the morning had been extremely squally, but towards noon the breeze became steadier, and we again made more sail, after which Lennox, the master of the schooner, and I, went to dinner. This skipper, by the way, was a rather remarkable personage,—first, he rejoiced in the euphoneous, but somewhat out of the way, appellation of Tobias Tooraloo; secondly, his face was not a tragic volume, but a leaf out of a farce. It was for all the world like the monkey face of a cocoa-nut; there being only three holes perceptible to the naked eye in it; that is, one mouth, always rounded and pursed up as if he had been whistling, and two eyes, such as they were, both squinting inwards so abominably, that one guessed they were looking for his nose. Now, if a person had been set to make an inventory of his physiognomy, at first sight, against this last mentioned feature, the return would certainly have been non est inventus. But the curious dial had a gnomon, such as it was, countersunk, it is true, in the phiz, and the wings so nicely bevelled away into the cheeks, that it could not well be vouched for either, unless when he sneezed; which, like the blowing of a whale, proved the reality of apertures, although you might not see them. His figure was short and squat; his arms peculiarly laconic; and as he always kept them in motion, like a pair of flappers, his presence might be likened to that of a turtle on its hind fins.