"Silence there in amidships," said Mr. Parallel: "you make so much noise that I can't keep my glass steady. Spin your yarns, Mr. Pearl, with your mouth shut, like an oyster;" and then, addressing the captain, "We rise her fast, my lord, and the breeze freshens: the ould beauty knows she's got some work cut out for her; she begins to smell garlic, and walks along like an ostrich on the stretch—legs and wings, and all in full play."
"What distance are we from Toulon?" inquired Lord Eustace, as he carefully and anxiously scanned the stranger through his glass.
"About nine leagues," promptly answered Mr. Parallel; "and if the breeze houlds on, or comes stronger, another three hours will carry us alongside of the enemy."
"We shall soon have her within reach of the bow-guns," said the first lieutenant, "and a shot well thrown may take in some of her canvass."
"That's a good deal of it chance-work," responded the master; "it mought and it moughtn't; but firing is sure to frighten the——"
"Spirits of the wind," added Nugent, who stood close beside him; "they become alarmed and take to flight, and so we lose the flapping of their airy wings."
"Hairy grandmother," grumbled old Parallel, "hairy wings indeed; why, who ever seed such a thing? Spirits of wind, too,—rum spirits, mayhap, to cure flatulency. Stick to natur, Mr. Nugent, or she'll be giving us another squall, just out o' revenge for being ridiculed."
"Get on with your yarn, Bobbo," said Joe Nighthead in an under tone; "and just you take a reef in your bellows, Mister Mungo, and don't speak so loud again."
"Where was I?" inquired Bob thoughtfully: "oh, now I recollect;—down in the cabin, going to sign the articles. 'Are you quite ready?' says the skipper to me as he raised the pen. 'All ready,' says I.—'Then hould up,' says he to the young lady, and she raised her fair arm. 'Come here, my man,' says he again to me, and I clapped him close alongside at the table; 'be ready to grab hould o' the pen in a moment, and make your mark there,' and he pointed to a spot on the parchment, with a brimstone seal stamped again it—you might have smelt it, messmates, for half a league—and, I'm blessed if I didn't have a fit o' the doldrums; but, nevertheless, I put a bould face upon it, and, 'Happy go lucky,' says I, 'all's one to Bob!' and then there was another rustling noise down the leg of his trousers, and his eye—that's his onkivered one—flashed again, and took to rolling out sparks like a flint-mill; 'Listen, my man,' says he, 'to what I'm going to say, and pay strict attention to it'—'I wool, your honour,' says I; 'but hadn't the lady better put down her arm?' says I; 'it ull make it ache, keeping it up so long.'—'Mind your own business, Bob Martingal,' says he, quite cantankerously; 'she's houlding the inkstand.'—'Who's cracking now, your honour?' says I laughing; 'the lady arn't got not nothing whatsomever in her hand. I'm blowed if I don't think you all carries out the name o' the craft In-fun-oh.'—'Right,' says he; 'and now attend. If after I have dipt this here pen in the ink, you refuse to sign the articles—you have heard o' this?' and he touched the black patch. I gave a devil-may-care sort of a nod. 'Well, then, if you refuses to sign, I'll nillyate you.'—'Never fear,' says I, making out to be as bould as a lion, for there was ounly he and I men-folk in the cabin; and, thinks I to myself, 'I'm a match for him singly at any rate.'—'You're mistaken,' says he, 'and you'll find it out to your cost, if you don't mind your behaviour, Bob Martingal.'—'I never opened my lips, your honour,' says I.—'Take care you don't,' says he, 'and be sure to obey orders.' He turned to the lady. 'Are you prepared, Marian?' axes he; but she never spoke. 'She's faint, your honour,' says I, 'God bless her!' The spiteful wretch give me a red-hot look, and his d—— oncivil cloven foot—for I'd swear to the mark it made—came crushing on my toes, and made me sing out blue blazes. 'Is that obeying orders?' says he: 'didn't I command you never to use that name afore me?'—'You did, your honour,' says I; 'but you might have kept your hoof off my toes, seeing as I haven't yet signed articles.'—'It was an accident,' says he, 'and here's something to buy a plaster;' and he throws down a couple of doubloons, which I claps into my pocket. 'You enter woluntarily into my service, then?' says he.—'To be sure I do,' says I, though I'm blessed if I wouldn't have given a treble pork-piece to have been on shore again.—'And you'll make your mark to that?' says he, 'and ax no further questions?'—'To be sure I will,' says I; and I'll just tell you what it is, messmates, I'm blowed if ever I was more harder up in my life than when I seed him raise the pen, as looked like a sharp lanchet, in his infernal thieving-hooks, and job it right into that beautiful arm, and the blood spun out, and the lady gave a skreek; and 'Sign—sign!' says he; 'quick, my man—your mark!'—'No, I'm d—if I do,' says I; 'let blood be on them as sheds it.'—'You won't?' says he.—'Never, you spawn o' Bellzebub!' says I; for I'd found him out, shipmates.—'Then take the consequences,' says he; and up went the black patch, and, by the Lord Harry! he sported an eye that nobody never seed the like on in their lives; it looked as big and as glaring as one o' them red glass bottles of a night-time as stands in the potecarry's windows with a lamp behind 'em; but it was ten thousand times more brilliant than the fiercest furnace that ever blazed,—you couldn't look upon it for a moment; and I felt a burning heat in my heart and in my stomach, as if I'd swallowed a pint of vitriol; and my strength was going away and I was withering to a hatomy, when all at once I recollects a charm as my ould mother hung round my neck when I was a babby, and I snatches it off and houlds it out at arm's length right in his very face. My precious eyes and limbs! how he did but caper about the cabin, till his hat fell off, and there was his two fore-tack bumkins reg'larly shipped over his bows and standing up with a bit of a twist outwards just like the head-gear of a billy-goat. 'Keep off, you bitch's babby!' says I, for he tried onknown schemes and manœuvres to get at me; till suddenly I hears a loud ripping of stitches, and away went the casings of his lower stancheons, and out came a tail as long——"
"Almost as long as your'n, I suppose," said old Jack Sheavehole; "a precious yarn you've been spinning us, Mister Bob!"