"Good-humour, gentlemen! good-humour!" said the captain, laughing; "no recriminations, if you please, or we shall bring some of your heads to the block."
"To make blockheads of 'em, I suppose," observed old Parallel; "by every rope in the top, but that's done already! Howsomever, as you are lecturing upon heads, why I'll just relate an anecdote of a circumstance that I was eyewitness to upwards of thirty years ago. I was then just appointed acting-master of the 'Never-so-quick,' one o' your ould ship sloops; and we were cruising in among the West Ingee islands, but more especially boxing about the island of Cuba, and that way, for pirates. Well, one morning at daybreak the look-out had just got upon the foretopsel-yard, when word was passed that there were two sail almost alongside of each other, and dead down to looard of us. There was a nice little breeze, and so we ups stick, squares the yards, and sets the stud'nsels a both sides, to run down and overhaul the strangers, though we made pretty certain it was a pirate plundering a capture; and we was the more convinced of the fact when broad daylight came, and our glasses showed that one of 'em was a long low schooner, just such a one as the picarooning marauders risk'd their necks in, and certainly better judges of a swift craft never dipp'd their hands in a tar-bucket. She saw us a-coming, and away she pay'd off before the wind, and up went a squaresel of light duck that dragg'd the creatur along beautifully. The other craft, a large brig, lay quite still with her maintopsel to the mast, except that she came up and fell off as if her helm was lash'd a-lee, Now the best point of the ould Never-so-quick's sailing was right afore it, and so we not only held our own, but draw'd upon the vagabond thief that was doing his best to slip his head out of a hangman's noose, when it fell stark calm, the brig lying about midway between his Majesty's ship and the devil's own schooner. Out went her sweeps, and out went our boats; but she altered her course to get in shore, and without a breath of wind they swept her along at the rate of four knots and a half, whilst our ould beauty would hardly move; so the captain recalls the boats, and orders 'em to overhaul the brig. We got alongside about noon, a regular wasting burning hot noon; and we found a hand cut off at the wrist grasping one of the main-chain plates, so that it could hardly be disengaged."
"Muscular power!" said Seymour; "the death-grapple, no doubt! astonishing tenacity notwithstanding."
"Howsomever, we did open the fingers," continued the master, "and found by its delicate whiteness, and a ring on the wedding-finger, that it belonged to a woman. When we got on board, the blood in various parts of the quarter-deck, and at the gangways, indicated the murderous tragedy that had been acted; but no semblance of human being could we find except a head,—a bloody head that seemed to have been purposely placed upon a flour-cask that was upended near the windlass. 'Well, I'm bless'd,' says one of our boasun's-mates, who had steered the pinnace,—'I'm bless'd if they arn't shaved you clean enough at any rate; but d—my tarry trousers, look at that!—why then I'm a Dutchman if it arn't winking at me.'—'Bathershin!' says an Irish topman, 'it's stretching his daylights he is, mightily plased to see such good company;' and sure enough the eyes were rolling about in a strange fashion for a head as had no movables to consort to it; and presently the mouth opened wide, and then the teeth snap'd to again, just like a cat-fish at St. Jago's. 'It's a horrible sight,' said one of the cutters, 'and them fellows'll go to —— for it, that's one consolation; but ain't it mighty queer, sir, that a head without ever a body should be arter making such wry faces, and opening and shutting his sallyport, seeing as he's scratched out of his mess?' A hideous grin distorted every feature,—so hideous that it made me shudder; and first one eye and then the other opened in rapid succession. 'I say, Jem,' says one of the pinnaces to the boasun's-mate,—'I say, Jem, mayhap the gentleman wants a bit o' pig-tail, for most likely he arn't had a chaw since he lost his 'bacca-box.' This sally, with the usual recklessness of seamen, produced a general laugh, which emboldened Jem to take out his quid, and, watching an opportunity, he claps it into between the jaws; but before he could gather in the slack of his arm, the teeth were fast hold of his fingers, and there he was, jamm'd like Jackson, and roaring out ten thousand murders. He tried to snatch his hand away, but the head held on to the cask like grim death against the doctor; at last away it roll'd over and Jem got clear, but the head stuck fast, and then we discovered that there was a body inside. The head of the cask had been taken out, and a hole cut hardly large enough to admit of the poor fellow's neck; but nevertheless it had been hoop'd up again, and when we got on board he was in the last convulsive gasps of strangulation. We released him immediately, but it was only to find him so shockingly mutilated that he died in about ten minutes afterwards; and not a soul was left to tell us the fatal tale, though from an ensign and some shreds of papers we conjectured the brig was a Spaniard. The pirates had scuttled her. She made water too fast to think of saving her, and in a couple of hours she went down."
"Thankye, master, thankye," exclaimed several; "why we shall have you writing a book before long, and you'll beat Nugent out and out. See, he's ready to yield the palm."
"Him!" uttered the old man, with a look expressive of rather more contempt than the young lieutenant merited. "Him!"
"Come, master," said Nugent, "we must have your song,—it is your turn next."
"So it appears," replied the old man, as the frigate suddenly heeled over. "You have had so much singing that even the winds must have a squall." They were rising hastily from their seats, when in an instant the frigate was nearly thrown on her beam-ends. Away went Parallel right over the table into the stomach of the marine Peabody, whom he capsized; and before another moment elapsed the gallant captain and his officers were scrambling between the guns to leeward, and half buried in water, amidst broken decanters and glasses, sea-biscuit and bottles. Old Parallel grasped a decanter of port that was clinking its sides against a ring-bolt, and, unwilling that so much good stuff should be wasted, clapped the mouth to his own; the purser was fishing for his wig, as he was extremely tenacious on the score of his bald head; the captain and Seymour were trying for the door; the doctor got astride one gun, and the two marine officers struggled for the other, so that as fast as one got hold his messmate unhorsed him again. Sinnitt had crawled up to the table, and Nugent twisted his coat-laps round him to preserve his MS. from becoming saturated. The frigate righted again. His lordship and his lieutenants rushed on deck, to behold the three topmasts, with all their lengths of upper spars, hanging over the side, having in a white squall been snapped short off by the caps. We will leave them in the present to
"Call all hands to clear the wreck."