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Land ho!" "Where away?" cried a mate, roused out of a forbidden doze by this talk, and blundering up to the roof of the after-castle. "Port bow, sir." "Port bow! The fiend take us! You block! You jolterhead! Where are you fetching us?" "I'm holding her due to the north, sir, as you bade me," faltered the steersman.
As great a jolterhead as any of the foregoing was the hero of a story in Cazotte's "Continuation" of the Arabian Nights, entitled "L'Imbécille; ou, L'Histoire de Xailoun," This noodle's wife said to him one day, "Go and buy some pease, and don't forget that it is pease you are to buy; continually repeat 'Pease! till you reach the market-place."
Now, if, in the conducting of this business, he shall be found to have acted the part of a stupid country jolterhead, or of a head-strong insolent ass, let him be left to the public contempt; but, if he shall be found to have carried the matter through with due respect towards the Prince and his Ministers, and at the same time, with the spirit and resolution of an independent man, let him have the praise that will be his due.
For out of seven hundred men in the ship Worcester the same that sank in the Bay of Funchal there was not so much as a powder-boy but could understand every word that I said, whereas on shore there is many a great jolterhead, like thyself, who might be a Portugee for all the English that he knows, and who stares at me like a pig in a hurricane if I do lint ask him what he makes the reckoning, or how many bells have gone.
"Ay, ay." "Be quick, man!" "I can't find 'em," was the whispered reply. "They've packed the cases atop of 'em." "Jolterhead!" muttered the other impatiently. "Why, they're just at the back." "Come down," was whispered from below, and to Hilary's great delight he heard the man on the watch go softly below.
"Be silent, Malise," put in the third pilgrim, whose dress of richer stuff than that of his companions, added to an air of natural command, betrayed the man of superior rank, "remember, great jolterhead, that we are not at the gates of Edinburgh with all the south country at our backs."
"Hold your confounded stupid tongue, will you, you old jolterhead;" and on this occasion he put his hand on his father's shoulder and shook him. "Who are you calling jolterhead? Who do you dare to speak to in that way? you impudent young cub you. Am I to ask your leave when I want to open my mouth?"
So the young jolterhead at once "changed his tune," and was loudly singing out these words when he met a funeral. The chief mourner punished him for what he thought his fiendish wish, and bade him say, "Pray God, send the soul to heaven!" which he was bawling when he met a he and a she-dog going to be hanged.
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