Snarleyyow | Page 2

retained one
Christian name throughout its pages. It is here reprinted, with the corrections of such slips
as those just mentioned, from the first edition in three volumes. Henry Colburn, 1837.
R.B.J.
Chapter I
Introduction of divers parties and a red-herring.
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 appeared 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 clack Japan worn off in
most parts of it. As we 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
dock-yards:--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 forelegs bowed out. His ears and tail had never been docked, which was a