“You fishy vaggybund, make tracks out o’ my ship, you sammony-tailed son of a sea-cook, or I’ll drive the grains slick through your scaly carkiss, I will.”
Waell, the critter seein’ as the capting meant dannger, made but one flop with his tail, and skeeted over the side o’ the ship into the water. The capting did not weigh anchor, nor nothin’, only during the night the cable was cut by the marmen, and the ship drifted on tew a korril reef, and rubbed a tarnal big hole in her plankin’.
“That’s a good yarn,” said the parson, “and I b’leve it’s true as gospel. Nothin’s impossible in natur, and the hull o’ these strange fixins as we hear tell on, is nothin’ more than links in the almighty great chain cable of universal natur’. Bats is the link o’ betweenity as connects the naturs o’ fowls o’ the air and the beasts o’ the field. Seals and alligators links the naturs o’ beasts and fishes. Babboons and apes links beasts with humans; and why should not marmaids be the links between humans and the fishes o’ the sea? But there’s the signal for the boat’s return; here’s jest a little horn a piece in the bottle—let’s licker one more round, and then absquattle.”
We pulled quietly back to the ship. The barrel of brandy had not been found, and I wish I may be sniggered if the capting did not fly into the biggest kind o’ quarter-deck passion I ever did see. He stormed great guns and fired hull broadsides at the boat’s crews, swearin’ that they should keep on dredgin’ till the tub was found, if it was the day arter eternity. So, you see, the hands was piped to dinner, but I was ordered tew keep in the boats and take care they didn’t stave each other.
Waell, I laid down in the capting’s gig, and what with the parson’s licker, and the talk abeout marmaids, and syringes, and water-galls, and one thing and t’other, a very pretty muss began mixin’ in my brain pan. So, as I was layin’ comfortably moored in the starn-sheets, with my head a leetle over the boats’ quarter, I thought it highly unwrong that the brandy tub hadn’t been fotched up, and that the men usin’ the grapnels must have shirked as we did, cos, if they’d sarched as they oughter, they must have seed the barrel, for the water was so petickler clear that you could dissarn the crabs crawlin’ over the korril rocks at the bottom o’ twenty fathom.
Waell, while I was lookin’ into the ocean to see if I could light upon the barrel, a leetle o’ the largest fish I ever did see come and swum right close to the bottom of the sea, jest under the boats. Then it kept risin’ and risin’, till I seed its long fins were shaped like men’s arms; and when it come near the sarfis, it turned on its back, and then I seed a human face! I know’d at once that it was a marmaid, or a marman, or one o’ them amfibberus critters called fabbelus syringes, as the chaplain had been spinnin’ his yarns abeout. So, the critter popt its head up jest above the water, which was smooth as glass, and a little smoother tew by a darned sight, and jest as clear and jest as shiny, and says he to me:
“Look here, strannger, you and your shipmates ain’t doin’ the genteel thing to me no how you can fix it, for they’re playing old hub with my garding grounds and oyster beds by scratchin’ and rakin’ ’em all over with them ar’ darned anchors and grapnel fixins, in a manner that’s harrowin’ to my feelins. If the capting wants his thundernation licker tub, let him just send eeny decent Christian down with me, and I’ll gin it him.”
Waell, I’m not goin’ to say that I didn’t feel kinder skeered, but the chaplain’s yarns had rubbed the rough edge off, and the notion o’ findin’ the capting’s cask pleased me mightily, cos I knowed it would tickle the old man like all creation, and sartingly get me three or four liberty days for shore goin’ when we returned to Port Mahon. So, as I hadn’t on nothin’ petikler as would spile, only a blue cotting shirt and sail-cloth pantys, and the weather bein’ most uncommon warm, I jest told the marman I was ready, and tortled quietly over the boat’s side into the blue transparent sea.
The marman grappled me by the fist, and we soon touched bottom, now I tell ye. I found as I could walk easy enough, only the water swayed me abeout jest as if I war a leetle tight, but I didn’t seem to suffer nothin’ from want o’ breath, nyther.
We soon reached whar’ the brandy-cask was lyin’ right under the ship’s keel, which accounts for its not bein’ seen nor nothin’ by the boats’ crews. I felt so everlastingly comical abeout findin’ the tub, that I told the half-bred dolphing fellow that pinted it out, that if I knowed how to tap it, I wish I might die if I wouldn’t give him a gallon o’ the stuff as a salvage fee.