The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle | Page 8

Tobias Smollett
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 p 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 ring
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 be 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,
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