“Oh, may I never! if I didn’t frighten the editor. The little spalpeen couldn’t eat his oysters and take his punch like a man. But sure if he didn’t, there’s more left for his betters.” So saying, he filled himself a goblet and drank it off. “Mr. Free, we won’t say much for your inclinations, for maybe they are not the best; but here’s bad luck to the fellow that doesn’t think you good company; and here,” added he, again filling his glass,--“and here’s may the devil take editors and authors and compositors, that won’t let us alone, but must be taking our lives and our songs and our little devilments, that belongs to one’s own family, and tell them all over the world. A lazy set of thieves you are, every one of you; spending your time inventing lies, devil a more nor less; and here,” this time he filled again,--“and here’s a hot corner and Kilkenny coals, that’s half sulphur, to the villain--” For what particular class of offenders Mike’s penal code was now devised, I was not destined to learn; for overcome by punch and indignation, he gave one loud whoop, and measured his length upon the floor. Having committed him to the care of the waiters, from whom I learned more fully the particulars of his acquaintance with Mr. Meekins, I enjoined them, strictly, not to mention that I knew anything of the matter; and betook myself to my bed sincerely rejoicing that in a few hours more Mike would be again in that laud where even his eccentricities and excesses would be viewed with a favorable and forgiving eye. CHAPTER XLI. IRELAND. “You’d better call your master up,” said the skipper to Mickey Free, on the second evening after our departure from Bristol; “he said he’d like to have a look at the coast.” The words were overheard by me, as I lay between sleeping and waking in the cabin of the packet, and without waiting for a second invitation, I rushed upon deck. The sun was setting, and one vast surface of yellow golden light played upon the water, as it rippled beneath a gentle gale. The white foam curled at our prow, and the rushing sound told the speed we were going at. The little craft was staggering under every sheet of her canvas, and her spars creaked as her white sails bent before the breeze. Before us, but to my landsman’s eyes scarcely perceptible, were the ill-defined outlines of cloudy darkness they called land, and which I continued to gaze at with a strange sense of interest, while I heard the names of certain well-known headlands assigned to apparently mere masses of fog-bank and vapor.