"He's got him."--"Nay, they're both gone."--"Man! I'm just thinking that it's ill interfering with the designs of Providence. We may lose Peter and not save Paul."--"Stow your discourses, Sandy!"--"They're hauling in our man, and time they did." The captain's voice now called to the first mate-- "Do you make it one or both, Mr. Waters?" "_Both_, sir!" "Thank GOD!" We hurrahed again, and the whaleboat-men replied--but their cheer only came faintly to us, like a wail upon the wind. Several men of our group were now called to work, and I was ordered below to bring up a hammock, and swing it in the steerage. I was vexed, as I would have given anything to have helped to welcome the whaleboat back. When the odd jobs I had been called to were done with, and I returned to the deck, it was just too late to see her hauled up. I could not see over the thick standing group of men, and I did not, of course, dare to push through them to catch sight of our heroes and the man they had saved. But a little apart from the rest, two Irish sailors were standing and bandying the harshest of brogues with such vehemence that I drew near, hoping at least to hear something of what I could not see. It was a spirited, and one would have guessed an angry dialogue, so like did it sound to the yapping and snapping of two peppery-tempered terriers. But it was only vehement, and this was the sum of it. "Bedad! but it's quare ye must have felt at the time." "I did not, unless it would be when Tom stepped out into the water, GOD bless him! with the rope aisy round his waist, and the waves drowning him intirely, and the corpse holding on to the boat's bottom for the dear life." "Pat!" said the other in mysterious tones, "would that that's hanging round his neck be the presarving of him, what?" "And why wouldn't it? But isn't he the big fool to be having it dangling where the wash of a wave, or a pickpocket, or a worse timptation than either might be staling it away from him?" "And where else would he put it?" "Did ye ever git the sight of mine?" "I did not." "On the back of me?" "What?" "Look here, now!" cried Pat, in the tones of one whose patience was entirely exhausted. His friend drew nearer, and I also ventured to accept an invitation not intended for me, so greatly was my curiosity roused by what the men said. Pat turned his back to us as rapidly as he had spoken, and stooping at about half-leap-frog-angle, whipped his wet shirt upwards out of his loosely-strapped trousers, baring his back from his waist to his shoulder-blades. The moon was somewhat overcast, but there was light enough for us to see a grotesque semblance of the Crucifixion tattooed upon his flesh in more than one colour, and some accompanying symbols and initials which we could hardly distinguish. "Now am I safe for Christian burial or not, in the case I'd be misfortunate enough to be washed up on the shores of a haythen counthry?" "Ye are so!"