In a little we heard the squeaking of a pig in the street, and our friend Shingle’s voice high in oath. I sallied forth to see the cause of the uproar, and found our host engaged in single combat with a drawn sword-stick that sparkled blue and bright in the moonbeam, his antagonist being a strong porker that he had taken for a town guard, and had hemmed into a corner formed by the stair and the garden wall, which, on being pressed, made a dash between his spindleshanks, and fairly capsized him into my arms. I carried him back to his couch again; and, thinking it was high time to be off, as I saw that Smoothpate, and Steady, and Nicodemus, and the more composed part of the company, had already absconded, I seized my hat, and made sail in the direction of the former’s house, where I was to sleep, when that devil Longtram made up to me.
“Hillo, my little man of war—heave-to a bit, and take me with you. Why what is that? what the deuce is that?” We were at this time staggering along under the dark piazza of a long line of low wooden houses, every now and then thundering against the thin boards or bulkheads that constituted the side next the street, making, as we could distinctly hear, the inmates start and snort in the inside, as they turned themselves in their beds. In the darkest part of the piazza, there was the figure of a man in the attitude of a telescope levelled on its stand, with its head, as it were, counter-sunk or morticed into the wooden partition. Tipsy as we both were, we stopped in great surprise.
“D—n it, Cringle,” said the Don, his philosophy utterly at fault, “the trunk of a man without a head,—how is this?”
“Why, Mr Longtram,” I replied, “this is our friend Mr Smoothpate, or I mistake greatly.”
“Let me see,” said Longtram,—“if it be him, he used to have a head somewhere, I know.—Let me see.—Oh, it is him; you are right, my boy; and here is his head after all, and a devil of a size it has grown to since dinner-time to be sure.—But I know his features bald pate—high forehead and cheekbones.”
Nota Bene. We were still in the piazza, where Smoothpate was unquestionably present in the body, but the head was within the house, and altogether, as I can avouch, beyond the Don’s ken.
“Where?” said I, groping about—“very odd, for deuce take me if I can see his head.—Why, he has none—a phenomenon—four legs and a tail, but no head, as I am a gentleman—lively enough, too, he is, don’t seem to miss it much.” Here poor Smoothpate made a violent walloping in a vain attempt to disentangle himself.
We could now hear shouts of laughter within, and a voice that I was sure belonged to Mr Smoothpate, begging to be released from the pillory he had placed himself in by removing a board in the wooden partition, and sliding it up, and then thrusting his caput from without into the interior of the house, to the no small amazement of the brown fiddler and his daughter who inhabited the same, and who had immediately secured their prize by slipping the displaced board down again, wedging it firmly on the back of his neck, as if he had been fitted for the guillotine, thus nailing him fast, unless he had bolted, and left his head in pawn.
We now entered, and perceived it was really Don Alonzo’s flushed but very handsome countenance that was grinning at us from where it was fixed, like a large peony rose stuck against the wall. After a hearty laugh we relieved him, and being now joined by Percales, who came up in his gig, with Mr Smoothpate’s following in his wake, we embarked for an airing at half-past one in the morning—Smoothpate and Percales, Longtram and Tom Cringle. Amongst other exploits, we broke into a proscribed conventicle of drunken negroes—but I am rather ashamed of this part of the transaction, and intended to have held my tongue, had Aaron managed his, although it was notorious as the haunt of all the thieves and slight ladies of the place; here we found parson Charley, a celebrated black preacher, three parts drunk, extorting, as Mawworm says, a number of devotees, male and female, all very tipsy, in a most blasphemous fashion, the table being covered with rummers of punch, and fragments of pies and cold meat; but this did not render our conduct more excusable, I will acknowledge. Finally, as a trophy, Percales, who was a wickeder little chap than I took him for, with Longtram’s help, unshipped the bell of the conventicle from the little belfry, and fastening it below Smoothpate’s gig, we dashed back to Mr Shingle’s with it clanging at every jolt. In our progress the horse took fright, and ran away, and no wonder.
“Zounds, Don, the weather-rein has parted—what shall we do?” said I.