It was in the month of January, 1699, that a one-masted vessel, with
black sides, was running along the coast near Beachy Head, at the rate
of about five miles per hour. The wind was from the northward and blew
keenly, the vessel was under easy sail, and the water was smooth. It
was now broad daylight, and the sun rose clear of clouds and vapour; but
he threw out light without heat. The upper parts of the spars, the
hammock rails, and the small iron guns which were mounted on the
vessel's decks, were covered with a white frost. The man at the helm
stood muffled up in a thick pea-jacket and mittens, which made his hands
appear as large as his feet. His nose was a pug of an intense bluish
red, one tint arising from the present cold, and the other from the
preventive checks which he had been so long accustomed to take to drive
out such an unpleasant intruder. His grizzled hair waved its locks
gently to the wind, and his face was distorted with an immoderate quid
of tobacco which protruded his right cheek. This personage was second
officer and steersman on board of the vessel, and his name was Obadiah
Coble. He had been baptised Obadiah about sixty years before; that is
to say, if he had been baptised at all. He stood so motionless at the
helm, that you might have imagined him to have been frozen there as he
stood, were it not that his eyes occasionally wandered from the compass
on the binnacle to the bows of the vessel, and that the breath from his
mouth, when it was thrown out into the clear frosty air, formed a smoke
like to that from the spout of a half-boiling tea-kettle.
The crew belonging to the cutter, for she was a vessel in the service of
his Majesty, King William the Third, at this time employed in protecting
his Majesty's revenue against the importation of alamodes and
lutestrings, were all down below at their breakfasts, with the exception
of the steersman and lieutenant-commandant, who now walked the
quarter-deck, if so small an extent of plank could be dignified with
such a name. He was a Mr Cornelius Vanslyperken, a tall meagre-looking
personage, with very narrow shoulders and very small head. Perfectly
straight up and down, protruding in no part, he reminded you of some
tall parish pump, with a great knob at its top. His face was gaunt,
cheeks hollow, nose and chin showing an affection for each other, and
evidently lamenting the gulf between them which prevented their meeting.
Both appear to have fretted themselves to the utmost degree of tenuity
from disappointment in love: as for the nose it had a pearly round tear
hanging at its tip, as if it wept. The dress of Mr Vanslyperken was
hidden in a great coat, which was very long, and buttoned straight down.
This great coat had two pockets on each side, into which its owner's
hands were deeply inserted, and so close did his arms lie to his sides,
that they appeared nothing more than as would battens nailed to a
topsail yard. The only deviation from the perpendicular was from the
insertion of a speaking-trumpet under his left arm, at right angles with
his body. It had evidently seen much service, was battered, and the
black Japan worn off in most parts of it. As we have said before, Mr
Vanslyperken walked his quarter-deck. He was in a brown study, yet
looked blue. Six strides brought him to the taffrail of the vessel, six
more to the bows, such was the length of his tether--and he turned and
turned again.
But there was another personage on the deck, a personage of no small
importance, as he was all in all to Mr Vanslyperken; and Mr
Vanslyperken was all in all to him; moreover, we may say, that he is the
hero of the TAIL. This was one of the ugliest and most ill-conditioned
curs which had ever been produced: ugly in colour; for he was of a dirty
yellow, like the paint served out to decorate our men-of-war by his
Majesty's dockyards;--ugly in face; for he had one wall-eye, and was so
far under-jawed as to prove that a bull-dog had had something to do with
his creation;--ugly in shape; for although larger than a pointer, and
strongly built, he was coarse and shambling in his make, with his fore
legs bowed out. His ears and tail had never been docked which was a
pity as the more you curtailed his proportions the better looking the
cur would have been. But his ears, although not cut, were torn to
ribbons by the various encounters with dogs on shore, arising from the
acidity of his temper. His tail had lost its hair from an inveterate
mange, and reminded you of the same appendage to a rat. Many parts of
his body were bared from the same disease. He carried his head and tail
low, and had a villainous sour look. To the eye of a casual observer,
there was not one redeeming quality that would warrant his keep; to
those who knew him well, there were a thousand reasons why he should be
hanged. He followed his master with the greatest precision and
exactitude, walking aft as he walked aft, and walking forward with the
same regular motion, turning when his master turned, and, moreover,
turning in the same direction; and, like his master, he appeared to be
not a little nipped with the cold, and, as well as he, in a state of
profound meditation. The name of this uncouth animal was very
appropriate to his appearance, and to his temper. It was Snarleyyow.
At last, Mr Vanslyperken gave vent to his pent-up feelings. "I can't,
I won't stand this any longer," muttered the lieutenant, as he took his
six strides forward. At this first sound of his master's voice the dog
pricked up the remnants of his ears, and they both turned aft. "She has
been now fooling me for six years;" and as he concluded this sentence,
Mr Vanslyperken and Snarleyyow had reached the taffrail, and the dog
raised his tail to the half cock.
They turned, and Mr Vanslyperken paused a moment or two, and compressed
his thin lips; the dog did the same. "I will have an answer, by all
that's blue!" was the ejaculation of the next six strides. The
lieutenant stopped again, and the dog looked up in his master's face;
but it appeared as if the current of his master's thoughts was changed,
for the current of keen air reminded Mr Vanslyperken that he had not
yet had his breakfast.
The lieutenant leant over the hatchway, took his battered
speaking-trumpet from under his arm, and putting it to his mouth, the
deck reverberated with, "Pass the word for Smallbones forward." The dog
put himself in a baying attitude, with his fore feet on the coamings of
the hatchway, and enforced his master's orders with a deep-toned and
measured bow, wow, wow.
Smallbones soon made his appearance, rising from the hatchway like a
ghost; a thin, shambling personage, apparently about twenty years old; a
pale, cadaverous face, high cheekbones, goggle eyes, with lank hair very
thinly sown upon a head which, like bad soil, would return but a scanty
harvest. He looked like Famine's eldest son just arriving to years of
discretion. His long lanky legs were pulled so far through his
trousers, that his bare feet, and half way up to his knees, were exposed
to the chilling blast. The sleeves of his jacket were so short, that
four inches of bone above his wrist were bared to view; hat he had none;
his ears were very large, and the rims of them red with cold, and his
neck was so immeasurably long and thin, that his head appeared to topple
for want of support. When he had come on deck, he stood with one hand
raised to his forehead, touching his hair instead of his hat, and the
other occupied with a half-roasted red-herring. "Yes, sir," said
Smallbones, standing before his master.
"Be quick!" commenced the lieutenant; but here his attention was
directed to the red-herring by Snarleyyow, who raised his head and
snuffed at its fumes. Among other disqualifications of the animal, be
it observed that he had no nose except for a red-herring, or a post by
the way-side. Mr Vanslyperken discontinued his orders, took his hand
out of his great-coat pocket, wiped the drop from off his nose, and then
roared out, "How dare you appear on the quarter-deck of a king's ship,
sir, with a red-herring in your fist?"
"If you please, sir," replied Smallbones, "if I were to come for to go
to leave it in the galley I shouldn't find it when I went back."
"What do I care for that, sir? It's contrary to all the rules and
regulations of the service. Now, sir, hear me--"
"O Lord, sir! let me off this time, it's only a _soldier_," replied
Smallbones, deprecatingly; but Snarleyyow's appetite had been very much
sharpened by his morning's walk; it rose with the smell of the herring,
so he rose on his hind legs, snapped the herring out of Smallbones'
hand, bolted forward by the lee gangway, and would soon have bolted the
herring, had not Smallbones bolted after him and overtaken him just as
he had laid it down on the deck preparatory to commencing his meal. A
fight ensued: Smallbones received a severe bite in the leg, which
induced him to seize a handspike, and make a blow with it at the dog's
head, which, if it had been well aimed, would have probably put an end
to all further pilfering. As it was, the handspike descended upon one
of the dog's fore toes, and Snarleyyow retreated, yelling, to the other
side of the forecastle, and as soon as he was out of reach, like all
curs, bayed in defiance.
Smallbones picked up the herring, pulled up his trousers to examine the
bite, poured down an anathema upon the dog, which was, "May you be
starved, as I am, you beast!" and then turned round to go aft, when he
struck against the spare form of Mr Vanslyperken, who, with his hands
in his pocket and his trumpet under his arm, looked unutterably savage.
"How dare you beat _my_ dog, you villain?" said the lieutenant at last,
choking with passion.
"He's a-bitten my leg through and through, sir," replied Smallbones,
with a face of alarm.
"Well, sir, why have you such thin legs, then?"
"'Cause I gets nothing to fill 'em up with."
"Have you not a herring there, you herring-gutted scoundrel? which, in
defiance of all the rules of the service, you have brought on his
Majesty's quarter-deck, you greedy rascal, and for which I intend--"
"It ar'n't my herring, sir, it be yours, for your breakfast; the only
one that is left out of the half-dozen."
This last remark appeared somewhat to pacify Mr Vanslyperken.
"Go down below, sir," said he, after a pause "and let me know when my
breakfast is ready."
Smallbones obeyed immediately, too glad to escape so easily.
"Snarleyyow," said his master, looking at the dog, who remained on the
other side of the forecastle; "O Snarleyyow, for shame! Come here, sir.
Come here, sir, directly."
But Snarleyyow, who was very sulky at the loss of his anticipated
breakfast, was contumacious, and would not come. He stood at the other
side of the forecastle, while his master apostrophised him, looking him
in the face. Then, after a pause of indecision, he gave a howling sort
of bark, trotted away to the main hatchway, and disappeared below. Mr
Vanslyperken returned to the quarter-deck, and turned, and turned as
before.