The stranger assented to the latter query, by smacking his lips, and
bowing, as he put down the nearly untouched draught. He then turned his
head, to examine the individual who might, by the manner in which he
declaimed, have been termed, in the language of the country, the second
“orator of the day.”
A stature which greatly exceeded six feet; enormous whiskers, that
quite concealed a moiety of his grim countenance; a scar, which was the
memorial of a badly healed gash, that had once threatened to divide
that moiety in quarters; limbs in proportion; the whole rendered
striking by the dress of a sea man; a long, tarnished silver chain, and
a little whistle of the same metal, served to render the individual in
question sufficiently remarkable. Without appearing to be in the
smallest decree aware of the entrance of one altogether so superior to
the class of his usual auditors, this son of the Ocean continued his
narrative as follows, and in a voice that seemed given to him by nature
as if in very mockery of his musical name; indeed, so very near did his
tones approach to the low murmurings of a bull, that some little
practice was necessary to accustom the ear to the strangely uttered
words.
“Well!” he continued, thrusting his brawny arm forth, with the fist
clenched, indicating the necessary point of the compass by the thumb;
“the coast of Guinea might have lain hereaway, and the wind you see,
was dead off shore, blowing in squalls, as a cat spits, all the same as
if the old fellow, who keeps it bagged for the use of us seamen,
sometimes let the stopper slip through his fingers, and was sometimes
fetching it up again with a double turn round the end of his sack.—You
know what a sack is, brother?”
This abrupt question was put to the gaping bumpkin, already known to
the reader, who, with the nether garment just received from the tailor
under his arm, had lingered, to add the incidents of the present legend
to the stock of lore that he had already obtained for the ears of his
kinsfolk in the country. A general laugh, at the expense of the
admiring Pardon succeeded. Nightingale bestowed a knowing wink on one
or two of his familiars, and, profiting by the occasion, “to freshen
his nip,” as he quaintly styled swallowing a pint of rum and water, he
continued his narrative by saying, in a sort of admonitory tone,—
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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