e his appearance.

"Did you come for--to want me, sir?"

"Yes, sir. I understand from the corporal that you held the dog while
that woman cut off his tail."

"If so be as how as the corporal says that 'ere," cried Smallbones,
striking the palm of his left hand with his right fist, "why I'm
jiggered if he don't tell a lie as big as himself--that's all. That
'ere man is my mortal henemy; and if that 'ere dog gets into trouble I'm
a sartain to be in trouble too. What should I cut the dog's tail off
for, I should like for to know? I ar'n't so hungry as all that, any
how."

The idea of eating his dog's tail increased the choler of Mr
Vanslyperken. With looks of malignant vengeance he ordered Smallbones
out of the cabin.

"Shall I shy this here overboard, sir?" said Smallbones, taking up the
dog's tail, which lay on the table.

"Drop it, sir," roared Vanslyperken.

Smallbones walked away, grinning with delight, but his face was turned
from Mr Vanslyperken.

The corporal returned, swabbed up the blood, and reported that the
bleeding had stopped. Mr Vanslyperken had no further orders for him--
he wished to be left alone. He leaned his head upon his hand, and
remained for some time in a melancholy reverie, with his eyes fixed upon
the tail, which lay before him--that tail, now a "bleeding piece of
earth," which never was to welcome him with a wag again. What passed in
Vanslyperken's mind during this time it would be too difficult and too
long to repeat, for the mind flies over time and space with the rapidity
of the lightning's flash. At last he rose, took up the dog's tail, put
it into his pocket, went on deck, ordered his boat, and pulled on shore.

CHAPTER THIRTY SEVEN.

IN WHICH MR. VANSLYPERKEN DRIVES A VERY HARD BARGAIN.

We will be just and candid in our opinion relative to the historical
facts which we are now narrating. Party spirit, and various other
feelings, independent of misrepresentation, do, at the time, induce
people to form their judgment, to say the best, harshly, and but too
often incorrectly. It is for posterity to calmly weigh the evidence
handed down, and to examine into the merits of a case divested of party
bias. Actuated by these feelings, we do not hesitate to assert, that,
in the point at question, Mr Vanslyperken had great cause for being
displeased; and that the conduct of Moggy Salisbury, in cutting off the
tail of Snarleyyow, was, in our opinion, not justifiable.

T