Tobias Smollett - The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle

After a pause of some minutes, the conversation was begun by this ferocious chief, who, fixing his eye upon the lieutenant with a sternness of countenance not to be described, addressed him in these words: “D— my eyes! Hatchway, I always took you to be a better seaman than to overset our chaise in such fair weather. Blood! didn’t I tell you we were running bump ashore, and bid you set in the ice-brace, and haul up a wind?”—“Yes,” replied the other, with an arch sneer, “I do confess as how you did give such orders, after you had run us foul of a post, so as that the carriage lay along, and could not right herself.”—“I run you foul of a post!” cried the commander: “d— my heart! you’re a pretty dog, an’t you, to tell me so above-board to my face? Did I take charge of the chaise? Did I stand at the helm?”—“No,” answered Hatchway; “I must confess you did not steer; but, howsomever, you cunned all the way, and so, as you could not see how the land lay, being blind of your larboard eye, we were fast ashore before you knew anything of the matter, Pipes, who stood abaft, can testify the truth of what I say.”—“D— my limbs!” resumed the commodore, “I don’t value what you or Pipes say a rope-yarn. You’re a couple of mutinous—I’ll say no more; but you shan’t run your rig upon me, d— ye, I am the man that learnt you, Jack Hatchway, to splice a rope and raise a perpendicular.”

The lieutenant, who was perfectly well acquainted with the trim of his captain, did not choose to carry on the altercation any further; but taking up his can, drank to the health of the stranger, who very courteously returned the compliment, without, however, presuming to join in the conversation, which suffered a considerable pause. During this interruption, Mr. Hatchway’s wit displayed itself in several practical jokes upon the commodore, with whom he knew it was dangerous to tamper in any other way. Being without the sphere of his vision, he securely pilfered his tobacco, drank his rumbo, made wry faces, and, to use the vulgar phrase, cocked his eye at him, to the no small entertainment of the spectators, Mr. Pickle himself not excepted, who gave evident tokens of uncommon satisfaction at the dexterity of this marine pantomime.

Meanwhile, the captain’s choler gradually subsided, and he was pleased to desire Hatchway, by the familiar and friendly diminutive of Jack, to read a newspaper that lay on the table before him. This task was accordingly undertaken by the lame lieutenant, who, among paragraphs, read that which follows, with an elevation of voice which seemed to prognosticate something extraordinary: “We are informed, that Admiral Bower will very soon be created a British peer, for his eminent services during the war, particularly in his late engagement with the French fleet.”

Trunnion was thunderstruck at this piece of intelligence: the mug dropped front his hand, and shivered into a thousand pieces; his eye glistened like that of a rattle-snake; and some minutes elapsed before he could pronounce, “Avast! overhaul that article again!”

It was no sooner read the second time, than, smiting the table with his fist, he started up, and, with the most violent emphasis of rage and indignation, exclaimed, “D— my heart and liver! ‘tis a land lie, d’ye see; and I will maintain it to be a lie, from the sprit-sail yard to the mizen-top-sail haulyards! Blood and thunder! Will. Bower a peer of this realm! a fellow of yesterday, that scarce knows a mast from a manger! a snotty-nose boy, whom I myself have ordered to the gun, for stealing eggs out of the hen-coops! and I, Hawser Trunnion, who commanded a ship before he could keep a reckoning, am laid aside, d’ye see, and forgotten! If so be as this be the case, there is a rotten plank in our constitution, which ought to be hove down and repaired, d— my eyes! For my own part, d’ye see, I was none of your Guinea pigs: I did not rise in the service by parlamenteering interest, or a handsome b— of a wife. I was not over the bellies of better men, nor strutted athwart the quarter-deck in a laced doublet, and thingumbobs at the wrists. D— my limbs! I have been a hard-working man, and served all offices on board from cook’s shifter to the command of a vessel. Here, you Tunley, there’s the hand of a seaman, you dog.”

So saying, he laid hold on the landlord’s fist, and honoured him with such a squeeze, as compelled him to roar with great vociferation, to the infinite satisfaction of the commodore, whose features were a little unblended by this acknowledgment of his vigour; and he thus proceeded, in a less outrageous strain: “They make a d—d noise about this engagement with the French: but, egad! it was no more than a bumboat battle, in comparison with some that I have seen. There was old Rook and Jennings, and another whom I’ll be d—d before I name, that knew what fighting was. As for my own share, d’ye see, I am none of those that hallo in their own commendation: but if so be that I were minded to stand my own trumpeter, some of those little fellows that hold their heads so high would be taken all aback, as the saying is: they would be ashamed to show their colours, d— my eyes! I once lay eight glasses alongside of the Flour de Louse, a French man-of-war, though her mettle was heavier, and her complement larger by a hundred hands than mine. You, Jack Hatchway, d— ye, what d’ye grin at! D’ye think I tell a story, because you never heard it before?”

“Why, look ye, sir,” answered the lieutenant, “I am glad to find you can stand your own trumpeter on occasion; though I wish you would change the tune, for that is the same you have been piping every watch for these ten months past. Tunley himself will tell you he has heard it five hundred times.”—“God forgive you! Mr. Hatchway,” said the landlord, interrupting him; “as I am an honest man and a housekeeper, I never heard a syllable of the matter.”

This declaration, though not strictly true, was extremely agreeable to Mr. Trunnion, who, with an air of triumph, observed, “Aha! Jack, I thought I should bring you up, with your gibes and your jokes: but suppose you had heard it before, is that any reason why it shouldn’t be told to another person? There’s the stranger, belike he has heard it five hundred times too; han’t you, brother?” addressing himself to Mr. Pickle; who replying, with a look expressing curiosity, “No, never;” he thus went on: “Well, you seem to be an honest, quiet sort of a man; and therefore you must know, as I said before, I fell in with a French man-of-war, Cape Finistere bearing about six leagues on the weather bow, and the chase three leagues to leeward, going before the wind: whereupon I set my studding sails; and coming up with her, hoisted my jack and ensign, and poured in a broadside, before you could count three rattlins in the mizen shrouds; for I always keep a good look-out, and love to have the first fire.”

“That I’ll be sworn,” said Hatchway: “for the day we made the Triumph you ordered the men to fire when she was hull-to, by the same token we below pointed the guns at a flight of gulls; and I won a can of punch from the gunner by killing the first bird.”

Exasperated at this sarcasm, he replied, with great vehemence, “You lie, lubber! D— your bones! what business have you to come always athwart my hawse in this manner? You, Pipes, was upon deck, and can bear witness whether or not I fired too soon. Speak, you blood of a –, and that upon the word of a seaman: how did the chase bear of us when I gave orders to fire?”

Pipes, who had hitherto sat silent, being thus called upon to give his evidence, after divers strange gesticulations, opened his mouth like a gasping cod, and with a cadence like that of the east wind singing through a cranny, pronounced, “Half a quarter of a league right upon our lee-beam.”