This Dennis, I regret to say, was smuggled aboard secretly just as we were leaving Talcahuana, in southern Chile--was stolen from the bosom of a most interesting family of brothers and sisters by a rogue of a steward, who afterward repeated the act on shipboard with distinguished results, except in this case our money, and not the pig, dramatically disappeared.
Dennis was discovered by his grunted protests against confinement shortly after we were under way--probably off Quiriquina Island, and too late to make restitution--and his beauty and developing intelligence so appealed to us that he was saved from a growling butcher to become an important member of our ship family. He was entered upon the cook's roster as Dennis O'Quiriquina, which was softened to O'Quiri, and then, in compliment to the land where his race is most prized, into Dennis O'Kerry--as Milesian a title as Brian Boru, of Clontarf, and all the sons of Heremon could have desired.
It must have been some time in March that he joined us, for I remember on St. Patrick's day, when the hills back of Valparaiso were echoing with the strains of "Garry-owen" and "The Connaughtman's Rambles," played by the flag-ship band, Dennis trotted aft at full speed, decked with green ribbons, and carrying a small clay pipe around his neck and the mealiest potato in the locker slung to his corkscrew of a tail. He appreciated the dignity of the time and place, for when we went to quarters he made a polite bow to the Captain, and for the first time in his life asserted and secured his rights as a quarter-deck. On occasions of special ceremony he had to be driven from the quarter-deck with contumely, but he never could be rooted from the spot, for regularly when the drum beat to quarters he came aft on a run to his station, blow high or blow low, fair weather or foul, and assumed to a mathematical nicety the spot selected on the saint's day.
He had his bath at daylight, and was washed and brushed and combed into a state of snowy whiteness which proclaimed the possibilities of piggy cleanliness, and then he feasted in dignified ease within the honored and exclusive precincts of the galley. During the day he lolled about the decks, generally in the wake of the spare spars, filled with the pride of placeship, and never awed from the career of his humor. He attended drills with praiseworthy punctuality, and was in nobody's watch and everybody's mess, which is the perfect flower of sea luxury. When night came, in his early days of leanness, he sought his hammock, and, later, his carefully prepared division tub; but after a time, when fatness clung to his bones, and no sailor's bed devices would hold him, he would airily promenade the deck, waking up a sailor here and there, until he found a shipmate fitted for his high nobility. I have frequently seen a man awake in the middle of the night, and, calling Dennis, give him half his blanket or pea-jacket, and then, with a contented grunt, Dennis would nestle snugly in his new bed, and sailor and pig sleep the sleep of the just, their mingled snores filling the still hours of the middle watch with a touching tale of boon companionship.