“Why, if I can’t get shipped to-night, I shall trundles down to Cove immediately, so as to cross at Passage before daylight, and take my chance of shipping with some of the outward-bound that are to sail, if the wind holds, the day after to-morrow. There is to be no pressing when blue Peter flies at the fore--and that was hoisted this afternoon, I know, and the foretopsail will be loose to-morrow.” “D--n my wig, but the small chap is right,” roared one. “I’ve a bloody great mind to go down with him,” stuttered another, after several unavailing attempts to weigh from the bench, where he had brought himself to anchor. “Hurrah!” yelled a third, as he hugged me, and nearly suffocated me with his maudling caresses, “I trundles wid you too, my darling, boy the piper!” “Have with you, boy--have with him,” shouted half-a-dozen other voices, while each stuck his oaken twig through the handkerchief that held his bundle, and shouldered it, clapping his straw or tarpaulin hat, with a slap on the crown, on one side of his head, and staggering and swaying about under the influence of the poteen, and slapping his thigh, as he bent double, laughing like to split himself, till the water ran over his cheeks from his drunken half-shut eyes, while jets of tobacco juice were squirting in all directions. I paid the reckoning, urging the party to proceed all the while, and indicating Pat Doolan’s at the Cove as a good rendezvous; and promising to overtake them before they reached passage, I parted company at the corner of the street, and rejoined the lieutenant. Next morning we spent in looking about the town--Cork is a fine town, contains seventy thousand inhabitants, more or less-safe in that--and three hundred thousand pigs, driven by herdsmen, with coarse grey greatcoats. The pigs are not so handsome as those in England, where the legs are short, and tails curly; here the legs are long, the flanks sharp and thin, and tails long and straight. All classes speak with a deuced brogue, and worship graven images; arrived at Cove to a large dinner and here follows a great deal of nonsense of the same kind. By the time it was half-past ten o’clock, I was preparing to turn in, when the master at arms called down to me,--“Mr Cringle, you are wanted in the gunroom.”