Like all new schemes and occupations, a sailor’s life, for a short period, was highly relished by Langan; some terrible gales of wind, however, and a tremendous storm or two, on his return to Ireland, showed the other side of the picture so emphatically, that Jack spoke to his ould dad to get his indentures from the captain, as he had a great wish to try his fortune on shore. Old Langan accomplished this circumstance for his darling boy; and Jack was bound apprentice to a sawyer. Langan soon became a proficient in his business, and arrived at the climax of his trade, a top-sawyer; but he was anxious to get a cut above the pit, and turn his hand to another account. Although but fifteen years of age, our hero had a taste for milling; he was fond of fighting, but not quarrelling; yet he was always ready to punish impudence and insolence, whenever rude fellows crossed his path. “From little causes great events arise!” Throwing snow-balls at each other, near the Dublin canal, produced a most determined mill between Jemmy Lyons, a Hibernian pugilist, and Jack Langan. It was a cool situation for a fight, but warm work while it lasted; and Jack’s blows were put in so fast and hard upon the face of Paddy Lyons, for the space of twenty-five minutes, that he cried out “Enough! too much!” This turn-up was without any precision as to time: it was pelt away, till Jemmy was carried off the ground. “By St. Patrick,” said Jack Riley (the friend of Lyons) to Langan, “you shall get a good bating for all your luck this time; and if you will meet me in Cannon’s Quarry, I will soon make you cry quarter.” “And is it to me you mane, Misther Riley, that is to ask you for quarter? Well, come on, and we’ll soon see all about it,” replied Langan. Riley was the hero of the Mud Island, in the milling way. In Cannon’s Quarry, Langan so served out Riley, that when he was taken home to Mud Island he was so spoilt as to be scarcely recognisable by his most intimate acquaintance. Langan was now viewed as a “striking” object in Mud Island; Jack however, was too good-humoured a fellow to be anything like a terror to the peaceable inhabitants of that happy spot. Pat Macguire had a great desire to take the shine out of Langan, and boasted that he would be “number one” in the Island. “So you shall,” replied our hero, “if you can.” But poor Pat Macguire reckoned his chickens before they were hatched; for, in the short space of ten minutes, his peepers were darkened, his nose swelled up to the size of two, his ivories dancing, and the whole of his face the picture of agony and distress. Soon after poor Pat was undressed and put to bed, he exclaimed, “By J——s, those blows I got from Jack Langan are more like the kicks of a horse than the thumps of a man.”