King Pest

(1835)A Tale Containing an Allegory.

The gods do bear and will allow in kings
The things which they abhor in rascal routes.
--Buckhurst's Tragedy of Ferrex and Porrex.

ABOUT twelve o'clock, one night in the month of October, and during
the chivalrous reign of the third Edward, two seamen belonging to the
crew of the "Free and Easy," a trading schooner plying between Sluys
and the Thames, and then at anchor in that river, were much
astonished to find themselves seated in the tap-room of an ale-house
in the parish of St. Andrews, London -- which ale-house bore for sign
the portraiture of a "Jolly Tar."

The room, although ill-contrived, smoke-blackened, low-pitched, and
in every other respect agreeing with the general character of such
places at the period -- was, nevertheless, in the opinion of the
grotesque groups scattered here and there within it, sufficiently
well adapted to its purpose.

Of these groups our two seamen formed, I think, the most interesting,
if not the most conspicuous.

The one who appeared to be the elder, and whom his companion
addressed by the characteristic appellation of "Legs," was at the
same time much the taller of the two. He might have measured six feet
and a half, and an habitual stoop in the shoulders seemed to have
been the necessary consequence of an altitude so enormous. --
Superfluities in height were, however, more than accounted for by
deficiencies in other respects. He was exceedingly thin; and might,
as his associates asserted, have answered, when drunk, for a pennant
at the mast-head, or, when sober, have served for a jib-boom. But
these jests, and others of a similar nature, had evidently produced,
at no time, any effect upon the cachinnatory muscles of the tar. With
high cheek-bones, a large hawk-nose, retreating chin, fallen
under-jaw, and huge protruding white eyes, the expression of his
countenance, although tinged with a species of dogged indifference to
matters and things in general, was not the less utterly solemn and
serious beyond all attempts at imitation or description.

The younger seaman was, in all outward appearance, the converse of
his companion. His stature could not have exceeded four feet. A pair
of stumpy bow-legs supported his squat, unwieldy figure, while his
unusually short and thick arms, with no ordinary fists at their
extremities, swung off dangling from his sides like the fins of a
sea-turtle. Small eyes, of no particular color, twinkled far back in
his head. His nose remained buried in the mass of flesh which
enveloped his round, full, and purple face; and his thick upper-lip
rested upon the still thicker one beneath with an air of complacent
self-satisfaction, much