“Aye, ut was thot. Thungs was lively for a but. Ut finished the mate.
He was on the brudge wuth me, an’ I told hum tull take a look tull the
wedges o’ number one hatch. She was takin’ watter freely an’ I was no
sure o’ number one. I dudna like the look o’ ut, an’ I was fuggerin’
maybe tull heave to tull the marn, when she took ut over abaft the
brudge. My word, she was a bug one. We got a but of ut ourselves on the
brudge. I dudna miss the mate ot the first, what o’ routin’ out Chips
an’ bulkheadun’ thot door an’ stretchun’ the tarpaulin over the
sky-light. Then he was nowhere to be found. The men ot the wheel said
as he seen hum goin’ down the lodder just afore she hut us. We looked
for’ard, we looked tull hus room, aye looked tull the engine-room, an’ we
looked along aft on the lower deck, and there he was, on both sides the
cover to the steam-pipe runnun’ tull the after-wunches.”
The pilot ejaculated an oath of amazement and horror.
“Aye,” the skipper went on wearily, “an’ on both sides the steam-pipe uz
well. I tell ye he was in two pieces, splut clean uz a herrin’. The sea
must a-caught hum on the upper brudge deck, carried hum clean across the
fiddley, an’ banged hum head-on tull the pipe cover. It sheered through
hum like so much butter, down atween the eyes, an’ along the middle of
hum, so that one leg an’ arm was fast tull the one piece of hum, an’ one
leg an’ arm fast tull the other piece of hum. I tull ye ut was fair
grewsome. We putt hum together an’ rolled hum in canvas uz we pulled hum
out.”
The pilot swore again.
“Oh, ut wasna onythun’ tull greet about,” Captain MacElrath assured him.
“’Twas a guid ruddance. He was no a sailor, thot mate-fellow. He was
only fut for a pugsty, an’ a dom puir apology for thot same.”
It is said that there are three kinds of Irish—Catholic, Protestant, and
North-of-Ireland—and that the North-of-Ireland Irishman is a transplanted
Scotchman. Captain MacElrath was a North-of-Ireland man, and, talking
for much of the world like a Scotchman, nothing aroused his ire quicker
than being mistaken for a Scotchman. Irish he stoutly was, and Irish he
stoutly abided, though it was with a faint lip-lift of scorn that he
mentioned mere South-of-Ireland men, or even Orange-men. Himself he was
Presbyterian, while in his own community five men were all that ever
mustered at a meeting in the Orange Men’s Hall. His community was the
Island McGill, where seven thousand of his kind lived in such amity and
sobriety that in the whole island there was but one policeman and never a
public-house at all.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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