It is supposed that some animals have a prescience of coming storms. Toby used to go regularly to the bulwarks every night, and placing his feet against them snuff all around him. If content, he would go and lie down and fall fast asleep; but it was a sure sign of bad weather coming before morning when Toby kept wandering by his master’s side and would not go to rest.
One day Captain Brown was going up the steps of the Custom-house, when he found that not only Toby but Toby’s two pigs were following close at his heels. He turned round to drive them all back; but Toby never thought for a moment that his master meant that he should return.
‘It is these two awkward creatures of pigs,’ thought Toby, ‘that master can’t bear the sight of.’
So Toby went to work at once, and first rolled one piggie down-stairs, then went up and rolled the other piggie down-stairs; but the one piggie always got to the top of the stair again by the time his brother piggie was rolled down to the bottom. Thinking that as far as appearances went, Toby had his work cut out for the next half-hour, his master entered the Custom-house. But Toby and his friends soon found some more congenial employment; and when Captain Brown returned, he found them all together in an outer room, dancing about with the remains of a new mat about their necks, which they had just succeeded in tearing to pieces.
Their practical jokes cost the captain some money one way or another.
One day the three friends made a combined attack on a woman, who was carrying a young pig in a sack; this little pig happened to squeak, when Toby and his pigs went to the rescue. They tore the woman’s dress to atoms and delivered the little pig. Toby was very much addicted to describing the arc of a circle; that was all very good when it was merely a fence he was flying over, but when it happened that a window was in the centre of the arc, then it came rather hard on the captain’s pocket.
In order to enable him to pick up a little after his long voyage, Toby was sent to country lodgings at a farmer’s. But barely a week had elapsed when the farmer sent him back again with his compliments, saying that he would not keep him for his weight in gold. He led the farmer’s sheep into all sorts of mischief that they had never dreamed of before, and had defied the dogs, and half-killed one or two of them.
Toby returned like himself, for when he saw his master in the distance he bleated aloud for joy, and flew towards him like a wild thing, dragging the poor boy in the mud behind him.
Toby was taken on board a vessel which was carrying out emigrants to New York, and was constantly employed all day in driving the steerage passengers off the quarter-deck. He never hurt the children, however, but contented himself by tumbling them along the deck and stealing their bread and butter.