Barbe glared at me in astonishment, almost in horror, as if I had suggested he was a steamboat sailor, and not a man-of-war's man born and bred, and then said, mournfully:
"WHY, SIR, I'D AS SOON EAT MY BROTHER AS THAT PIG."
"Why, sir, I'd as soon eat my brother as that pig—as that Dennis, sir. He's weathered o' all we have, and I'd as leave stick my knife into a babby as into that animal. Of course, sir, if it's go ashore, go it is, sir. But I'd like to make terms with the man that's to have him, so Dennis will get the treatment and the kindness he larned with us, sir."
It was as I had expected, and so the arrangements for his new home ashore were made.
Eheu, fugaces! Dennis went ashore the next day in the dingy—bag and hammock, ribbons, dhudeen, and potato—all the men clustering in the bridleports and gangways to see him off, and the officers waving a farewell from aft. As his pigship pulled under the bows I heard from forward a rousing cheer, which was the last ship greeting he was ever to know.
A countryman of ours had drifted into that land, and Dennis had been consigned to his care under a guarantee that his later days would be spent on a plantation inland and never killed.
DENNIS O'KERRY.
I drifted ashore next day, and there, lying in the shadow of a pandanus-tree on the shore line, his nose buried in his fore-trotters, and his eyes closed in weary waiting and sorrow, was Dennis. He looked up mournfully as I entered the ship-chandlers, and gave me a grunt of sullen recognition, as if he felt I were the author of his misery, or at least an aider and abettor of those who had sent him into exile. His new owner said he had moped from the beginning, at first wistfully roaming about, and at last settling into the morbidly melancholy condition in which I found him.