Dogs -- Fiction; Great Britain. Royal Navy -- Fiction; Historical fiction; Seafaring life -- Fiction
In the meantime Smallbones had gained his feet, and was rubbing his
ribs, to ascertain if they were all whole. "Well, I'm sure," said he,
"if I ar'n't flattened for all the world like a pancake, with that 'ere
corporal's weight. One may as well have a broad-wheel waggon at once go
over one's body; but what could make him come for to go to run away
bellowing in that ere manner? He must have seen the devil; or, perhaps,"
thought Smallbones, "that imp of the devil, Snarleyyow. I'll go and see
what it was, anyhow."
Smallbones, rubbing his abdomen, where the corporal had trod hardest,
walked into the cabin, where he beheld the dog. He stood with his mouth
wide open.
"I defy the devil and all his works," exclaimed he, at last, "and you be
one of his, that's sartain. I fear God, and I honour the king, and the
parish taught me to read the bible. There you be resurrectioned up
again. Well, it's no use, I suppose. Satan, I defy you, anyhow, but it's
very hard that a good Christian should have to get the breakfast ready,
of which you'll eat one half; I don't see why I'm to wait upon the devil
or his imps."
Then Smallbones stopped, and thought a little. "I wonder whether he
bee'd dead, as I thought. Master came on board last night without no one
knowing nothing about it, and he might have brought the dog with him, if
so be he came to again. I won't believe that he's hal-together not to be
made away with, for how come his eye out? Well, I don't care, I'm a good
Christian, and may I be swamped if I don't try what he's made of yet!
First time we cuts up beef, I'll try and chop your tail, anyhow, that I
will, if I am hung for it."
Smallbones regained his determination. He set about laying the things
for breakfast, and when they were ready he went up to the quarter-deck,
reporting the same to Mr Vanslyperken, who had expected to see him
frightened out of his wits, and concluding his speech by saying, "If you
please, sir, the dog be in the cabin, all right; I said as how I never
kilt your dog, nor buried him neither."
"The dog in the cabin!" exclaimed Mr Vanslyperken, with apparent
astonishment. "Why, how the devil could he have come there?"
"He cummed off, I suppose, sir, same way as you did, without nobody
knowing nothing about it," drawled out Smallbones, who then walked away.
In the meantime the corporal had been picked up, and the men were
attempting to recover him. Smallbones went forward to see what had
become of him, and learnt how it was that he was insensible.
"Well, then," thought Smallbones, "it may have been all the same with
the dog, and I believe there's humbug in it, for if the dog had made his
appearance, as master pretends he did, all of a sudden, he'd a been more
frightened than me."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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