Alfred Bate Richards

“ Had the Portingallo dared to brave the captain’s wrath, he would have slain the hound with a boarding-pike as he lay there securely fastened, by turns growling and whining, his head couched motionless between his paws, his tail ever and anon beating the deck with quick impatient knocks, and the fiery glitter of his deep-sunk, blood-shot eyes following every movement of him whom he had so strangely assailed. ”

“ As for Zanga, he spoke to none, answered none, and none cared to question his grief. Have any of you ever chanced to see a negro’s face turn ashen pale—all the villanous ink of his complexion precipitated from the dry parchment of his skin by the deep inward chemistry of an agonising breast? That night, about eight bells, being toward the end of the Portingallo’s watch on deck, a cry from the still surface of the ocean but a little way off, which seemed to vibrate through the ship’s timbers, roused us from sleep. ”

“ The weather being very sultry the sailors became irritable, until if a man but chanced to look at another it gave offence, as if each thought his neighbour wished him to glut the monster’s ravening maw, and so solve the doom which threatened all alike. At length, on the seventh day, the third mate, a scowling Portingallo, quarrelled with the black cook Zanga, who, he swore, put cockroaches purposely in the dishes that underwent the sable preparation of his most greasy hands. ”