"Club him, you old hen-catcher, you, before he goes through the hawsepipe. That's the way, that's the way. Shure, bad luck to you, you have missed him. Stand back there, stand back there, let me have at him. There he goes again under the lumber. Get me the bar, Pete. Look out, me byes. Shure and be Hivins out he comes again. Strike him between the eyes, Pete. Give me the bar, Pete. Shure'n you couldn't shtrike the sheep barn you was raised in."
"What's all this row about?" I asked.
"Ah, shure, sir, it's me auld friend Neptune would be after sendin' us a Christmas present. He is as fine a bonita as iver greased a mouth, but it's the divil's own toime we have had sub-duin' him."
"Bring him up on the deck-load and let us look him over."
"Riley," said I, when they had the great fish stretched out before us, "that is a dolphin, and no bonita,—notice the wedge-shaped head, and broad tail. No doubt he was cornered by a school of sword fish, and this fastest fish that swims the ocean had to make a leap for life by jumping aboard our ship. Bring the lantern here, and you will see him change to all colors of the rainbow while he is dying, another proof that he is a dolphin, that is, if he is not already dead."
"Be Hivins, and it's far from dead he is, look at the gills moving." Surely enough, we watched and the beautiful colors came, brilliant blue and green and shaded red, and again I wondered, and it seemed to me that in the passing of the human life there might be just such a color change, invisible to those who are left behind.
Dismissing these thoughts once and for all from my mind, I entered into the long discussion incident to the settlement of claims on the dead dolphin, as to who had discovered him, etc., etc. Broken-Nosed Pete was sure that he had seen him first, very much to the disgust of Riley, who, however, could not deny that his one eye was usually cocked to windward.
I then turned to the men and told them that they need no longer be afraid of the ghost in the Captain's cabin.
Riley spoke up: "And, shure, sir, you wasn't thinking that it was meself that was scared?"
"Why do you carry the belaying-pin aft to the wheel with you, if you are not scared?" said Pete.