“On, through the ground-sea, shove!
Light on the larboard bow!
There’s a nine-knot breeze above,
And a sucking tide below!
Hush! for the beacon fails:
The skulking gauger’s by.
Down with your studding-sails,
Let jib and foresail fly!
Hurrah for the light once more!
Point her for Shark’s-Nose Head;
Our friends can keep the shore,
Or the skulking gauger’s dead.
On, through the ground-sea, shove!
Light on the larboard bow!
There’s a nine-knot breeze above,
And a sucking tide below!”
Among the “king’s men,” whose achievements haunted the old man’s memory with a sense of mingled terror and dislike, a certain Parminter and his dog occupied a principal place. This officer appeared to have been a kind of Frank Kennedy[36] in his way, and to have chosen for his watchword the old Irish signal, “Dare!”
“Sir,” said old Tristram once, with a burst of indignant wrath—“Sir, that villain Parminter and his dog murdered with their shetting-irons no less than seven of our people at divers times, and they peacefully at work in their calling all the while!”
I found on further inquiry that this man Parminter was a bold and determined officer, whom no threats could deter and no money bribe. He always went armed to the teeth, and was followed by a large, fierce, and dauntless dog, which he had thought fit to call Satan. This animal he had trained to carry in his mouth a carbine or a loaded club, which, at a signal from his master, Satan brought to the rescue. “Ay, they was bold audacious rascals—that Parminter and his dog—but he went rather too far one day, as I suppose,” was old Tristram’s chuckling remark, as he leaned on his spade, and I stood by.
“Did he, Trim; in what way?”
“Why, sir, the case was this. Our people had a landing down at Melhuach,[37] in Johnnie Mathey’s hole, and Parminter and his dog found it out. So they got into the cave at ebb tide, and laid in wait, and when the first boat-load came ashore, just as the keel took the ground, down storms Parminter, shouting for Satan to follow. The dog knew better, and held back, they said, for the first time in all his life: so in leaps Parminter smash into the boat alone, with his cutlass drawn; but” (with a kind of inward ecstasy) “he didn’t do much harm to the boat’s crew——”
“Because,” as I interposed, “they took him off to their ship?”