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Updated: May 15, 2025
Corporal Van Spitter, so soon as he had expended all his breath in shouting for help, sat down with such a flop of despair on the thwart of the boat, as very nearly to swamp it. As it was, the water poured in over the starboard-gunnel, until the boat was filled up to his ankles.
The corporal went over to the widow's, and narrated all that he had heard and seen. "Why, the traitor!" exclaimed the widow. "Yes, mein Gott!" repeated the corporal. "The villain to sell his country for gold." "Yes, mein Gott!" repeated the corporal. "Fifty guineas, did you say, Mynheer Van Spitter?" "Yes, mein Gott!" repeated the corporal.
That Corporal Van Spitter should assert that he saw the devil at his shoulder was a matter of no small annoyance any way; for either the devil was at his shoulder or he was not.
Sir Robert nodded his head, and Vanslyperken walked with his rope round his neck over to where the dog was held by Smallbones, bent over the cur, and kissed it again and again. "Enough," cried Sir Robert, "bring him back." Corporal Van Spitter took hold of Vanslyperken by the arm, and dragged him to the other side of the deck.
Smallbones followed in obedience by his former persecutor and his superior officer; a bag of bones a reed a lath a scarecrow; like a pilot cutter ahead of an Indiaman, followed in his wake by Corporal Van Spitter, weighing twenty stone. How could this be? It was human nature.
They are considered a heavy, phlegmatic sort of people, but on every point in which the art of ingeniously tormenting is in request, it must be admitted that they have taken the lead of much more vivacious and otherwise more inventive nations. And now the reader will perceive why Corporal Van Spitter was in a dilemma.
He held him, grasped by the middle part, about where Smallbones' stomach ought to have been, and the head and heels of the poor wretch both hung down perpendicularly, and knocked together as the corporal proceeded aft. As soon as Van Spitter had arrived at the gun he laid down his charge, who neither moved nor spoke.
Corporal Van Spitter, who had made up his mind how to act after their previous conference, hummed and hawed, and appeared unwilling to enter upon the subject, until he was pushed by his commandant, when the corporal observed there was something very strange about the lad, and hinted at his being sent in the cutter on purpose to annoy his superior.
During the time that Vanslyperken waited for the report of the lights, he passed over in his mind the untoward events which had taken place the loss of the widow's good-will, the loss of Corporal Van Spitter, who was adrift in the Zuyder Zee, the loss of five thousand pounds through the dog, and strange to say, what vexed him more, the loss of the dog's eye; and when he thought of all these things, his heart was elated, and he rejoiced in the death of Smallbones, and no longer felt any compunction.
Mr Vanslyperken was superstitious and cowardly, and he did believe that such a thing was possible; and when he canvassed it in his mind he trembled, and looked over his shoulder. But Corporal Van Spitter might have asserted it only to frighten him.
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