“Old Moriarty, the pilot, your honour; I brought him in out of the wet to dry himself.”
“Send him in here to me,” said Luttrell, who, throwing a root of oak on the fire, sat down with his back to the door, and where no light should fall upon his face.
“It’s blowing fresh, Moriarty,” said he, with an affected ease of manner, as the old man entered and stood nigh the door.
“More than fresh, your honour. It’s blowin’ hard.”
“You say that, because you haven’t been at sea these five-and-twenty years; but it’s not blowing as it blew the night I came up from Clew, no, nor the day that we rounded Tory Island.”
“Maybe not; but it’s not at its worst yet,” said the old fellow, who was ill-pleased at the sneer at his seamanship.
“I don’t know what the fellows here think of such weather, but a crew of Norway fishermen—ay, or a set of Deal boatmen—would laugh at it.”
“Listen to that now, then,” said the other, “and it’s no laughing matter;” and as he spoke a fierce gust of wind tore past, carrying the spray in great sheets, and striking against the walls and windows with a clap like thunder. “That was a squall to try any boat!”
“Not a boat like the large yawl!”
“If it didn’t throw two tons of water aboard of her, my name isn’t Moriarty.”