Afloat and Ashore | Page 7

forenenst ye. Aye, yez have, as sure's me name's Tim Rooney, me darlint!"
"Why do you say so, sir?" I asked--more, however, out of curiosity than alarm, for I thought he was only trying to "take a rise out of me," as the saying goes. "Why should you pity me?"
"An' is it axin' why, yez are?" said he, his broad smile expanding into a chuckle and the chuckle growing to a laugh. "Sure, an' ye'll larn afore ye're much ouldher, that the joker who goes to say for fun moight jist as well go to the ould jintleman's place down below in the thropical raygions for divarshun, plaize the pigs!"
His genial manner, and the merry twinkle in his eyes, which reminded me of father's when he made some comical remark, utterly contradicted his disparaging comments on a sailor's life, and I joined in the hearty "ho, ho, ho!" with which he concluded his statement.
"Why, then, did you go to sea, Mr Rooney," I asked, putting him into a quandary with this home-thrust; "that is, if it is such a bad place as you make out?"
"Bedad, sorry o' me knows!" he replied, shoving his battered cheese- cutter cap further off his brows and scratching his head reflectively. "Sure, an' it's bin a poozzle to me, sorr, iver since I furst wint afore the mast."
"But--" I went on, wishing to pursue my inquiries, when he interrupted me before I was able to proceed any further.
"Whisht! Be aisy now, me darlint," he whispered, with an expressive wink; and, turning round sharply on the stevedores, who, taking advantage of his talking to me, had struck work and were indulging in a similar friendly chat, he began briskly to call them to task for their idleness, raising his voice to the same stentorian pitch that had startled me just now on our first introduction.
"What the mischief are ye standin' star-gazin' there for, ye lazy swabs, chatterin' an' grinnin' away loike a parcel av monkeys?" he cried, waving his arms about as if he were going to knock some of them down. "If I had my way wid ye, an' had got ye aboord a man-o'-war along o' me, it's `four bag' I'd give ivery man Jack o' ye. Hoist away an' be blowed to ye, or I'll stop y'r pay, by the howly pokher I will!"
At this, the men, who seemed to understand very well that my friend of the woollen jersey and canvas overalls's hard voice and words did not really mean the terrible threats they conveyed, although the speaker intended to be obeyed, started again briskly shipping the cargo and lowering it down into the hold, grinning the while one to another as if expressing the opinion that their taskmaster's bark was worse than his bite.
"I must kape 'em stirrin' their stoomps, or ilse, sure, the spalpeens 'ud strike worrk the minnit me back's toorned," said he on resuming his talk with me, as if in explanation of this little interlude. "Yez aid y'r name's Grame, didn't ye? I once knew a Grame belongin' to Cork, an' he wor a pig jobber. S'pose now, he warn't y'r ould father, loike?"
"Certainly not!" cried I, indignantly. "My father is a clergyman and a gentleman and an Englishman, and lives down in the country. Our name, too, is Graham and not Grame, as you pronounce it."
"'Pon me conshinsh, I axes y'r pardin, sorr. Sure, an' I didn't mane no harrm," said my friend, apologising in the most handsome way for the unintentional insult; and, putting out a brawny hairy paw like that of Esau's, he gave a grip to my poor little mite of a hand that made each knuckle crack, as he introduced himself in rough and hearty sailor fashion. "Me name's Tim Rooney, as I tould you afore, Misther Gray- ham--sure, an' it's fond I am ov bacon, avic, an' ham, too, by the same token! I'd have ye to know, as ye're a foorst-class apprentice--which kills me enthirely wid the laffin' sure!--that I'm the bosun av the Silver Quane; an' as we're agoin' to be shipmets togither, I hopes things'll be moighty plisint atwane us, sure."
"I'm sure I hope so, too," I replied eagerly, thinking him an awfully jolly fellow, and very unlike the man I imagined him to be at first; and we then shook hands again to cement the compact of eternal friendship, although I took care this time that my demonstrative boatswain should not give me so forcible a squeeze with his huge fist as before, observing as I looked round the vessel and up at her towering masts overhead: "What a splendid ship!"
"Aye, she's all that, ivery inch of her from truck to kelson," he answered equally enthusiastically; "an' so's our foorst mate, a sailor all over from the sole