Salt Water | Page 7

in the distance; and one more I remember was a seaman

cast upon the shore, with a female bending over him; while there were
several pictures of ships, some of which were on the tops of waves
running truly mountains high, and curling over in a very terrific way
indeed. I had time to inspect all these things while my landlady was
getting my bed-room ready. I had not dined; and when Larry, who was
rather longer than I had expected, returned, I found that he had
purchased all sorts of necessary provisions, and that they only wanted
cooking for me to eat them. While he laid the cloth, the landlady
performed the office of cook; and in a little time a very nice dinner of
veal cutlets, ham, and fried potatoes made its appearance. When Larry
had nothing to do but to look about him, I observed him fix his eyes in
a strange sort of way on the model of the ship, and then at the shells
and the other things in the room. At last he turned to the landlady.
"Please, marm," said he, "where did you get all them things from?"
"Oh, sir," answered the landlady, "they were given to me by my poor
dear man, who has been dead and gone this many a long year."
"May I be bold to ask, and no offence, what is your name, marm?" said
Larry.
"My husband was an Irishman, like you, and my name is Harrigan,"
answered the landlady, who held at the moment a jug of beer, from
which she was going to pour me out a tumblerful.
"Faith, you may well say that he was like me, marm, for, curious
enough, that's my name too," answered Larry.
"Your name!" exclaimed the landlady, standing still and looking
doubtfully at him.
"Yes, my name--it is, indeed," said Larry. "And may I ask what is your
Christian name, marm?"
"Jane is my name, and yours is Lawrence!" shrieked Mrs Harrigan,
letting fall the jug of beer, which was smashed to pieces, and rushing
towards him.

"By the pipers, you're right now; but if you're yourself--my own Jane
Harrigan, whom I thought dead and buried, or married long ago to
another man, it's the happiest day of my life that I've seen for a long
time," cried Larry, throwing his arms round her and giving her a hug
which I thought would have squeezed all the breath out of her body.
I looked up at the pictures on the wall, and fancied he was imitating
one of the persons there represented; though, to be sure, my friends
were rather aged lovers.
"And I thought you were lost at sea long, long ago," cried Mrs Harrigan,
now sobbing in earnest.
"Faith, so I was, Jane, and it's a long time I've been being found again,"
said Larry; "and how we've both come to life again is more than I can
tell."
"Oh, I never forgot you, and wouldn't listen to what any other man had
to say to me," said Mrs Harrigan.
"Nor I, faith, what the girls said to me," returned Larry. "But for the
matter of that, my timber toe wasn't much to their liking."
"I see, Larry, you've lost your leg since I lost you, and it was that
puzzled me, or I should have known you at once--that I should,"
observed Mrs Harrigan, giving him an affectionate kiss on his rough
cheek.
They did not mind me at all, and went on talking away as if I was not in
the room, which was very amusing.
Larry afterwards confessed to me that he should not have recognised
his wife, for when he went to sea and left her for the last time, she was
a slim, pretty young woman; and though she was certainly not
uncomely, no one could accuse her of not having flesh enough. Larry,
as many another sailor has done, had married at the end of a very short
courtship, his wife, then a nursery-maid in an officer's family at
Portsmouth; and a few weeks afterwards he had been pressed and sent

out to the East Indies. While there, he had been drafted into another
ship, and the ship in which he had left home had been lost with all
hands. Of this event his wife became acquainted, and having come
from an inland county, and not knowing how to gain further
information about him, she had returned to her parents in the country.
They died, and she went again into service.
Meantime, Larry, having lost his leg, came home, and notwithstanding
all his inquiries, he could gain no tidings of her. At last he came to the
conclusion that she must have married again, probably another sailor,
and gone away with him--no uncommon occurrence in