I was just above their heads in the mizzen-top, my favourite retreat of an evening, whither I had taken up a book to read, although I could barely distinguish the print by this time, daylight had disappeared so quickly on the sun's sinking in the deep astern; when, all at once, a violent squealing and grunting broke out from the long-boat, sufficient for more than a herd of porkers all in their last agony, instead of its coming from one or even all three of the pigs Captain Gillespie had stowed there, fattening them up until he thought them big enough to kill for the table.
"Who the dickens is that troubling my pigs ?" roared the captain, clutching hold of the brass rail of the poop in front of him, and squinting forwards as well as he could in the dim light to where the clew of the main-sail just lifting disclosed the fore part of the deck- house with the long-boat on top.

"None of your sky-larking there, d'ye hear?
Leave 'em alone!" But, there was no one to be seen either on top of the deck-house or in the long-boat, although the squealing still continued.
"D'ye hear me there, forrud ?" shouted Captain Gillespie again in a voice of thunder, having now worked himself up into one of his tornado-like rages.

"Leave those pigs alone, I tell ye!" "Sure, sorr, there's nobody there," said Tim Rooney, who was on the main-deck below, just under the break of the poop.

"There's divil a sowl botherin' the blissid pigs, sorr, as ye can say for y'rsilf.

Faix, they're ownly contrary a bit, sorr, an' p'raps onaisy in their moind!" "Nonsense, man!" cried Captain Gillespie stamping his foot.