ell, Misther Robert! if ever I laid my eyes on the likes of such a ship, in all my born days!'
With this impressive ejaculation, Andy Callaghan backed on the wharf to take a completer view of the wondrous whole. His untravelled imagination had hitherto pictured steamers after the one pattern and similitude of those which sailed upon the river Lee and in the Cove of Cork—craft which had the aquatic appendages of masts and decks, and still kept up an exterior relation with the ship tribe. But this a steamboat! this great three-storied wooden edifice, massive-looking as a terrace of houses!
'An' a hole in the side for a hall-door!' soliloquized Andy. 'No, but two holes, one for the quality an' the other for the commonality. An' no deck at all at all for the people to take the air, only all cabins intirely! If it isn't the very dead image of a side of a sthreet swimmin' away!'
Andy's outspoken remarks attracted some notice when he was fairly aboard.
'This is the fore-cabin, and you must try to keep quiet,' said Arthur. 'We'll be off presently; and whatever you do,' he added in a low tone, 'keep clear of that bar'—indicating a counter recess where liquors were sold, and where customers had congregated already.
'Never fear, sir,' was the reply; 'though they've no right to put it there forenent us, an' they knowin' that the bare sight of it is like fire to tow with many a one. But sure they're not thinkin' only how to get money:' and Mr. Callaghan ended his moral reflections by sitting down beside a family of small children, who squalled in different keys, and treating one of them to a ride on his foot, which favour, being distributed impartially, presently restored good humour.
'An' isn't there any peep of the fresh air allowed us at all?' inquired Andy of a man near him, whose peculiar cut of garments had already excited his curiosity. 'It's a quare vessel that hasn't aither a sail or deck: we might all go to the bottom of the say in this big box, 'athout bein' a bit the wiser.'
The emigrant with the six children looked rather anxious, and hugged her baby closer, poor woman; glancing for a minute at the bar, where her husband was sipping gin, and already brawling with an American. But as the apple-complexioned man whom Andy addressed happened to be a French habitan, limited in English at the best of times, the Irish brogue puzzled him so thoroughly, that he could only make a polite bow, and signify his ignorance of Monsieur's meaning.
'Maybe he's an Injin,' thought Andy; 'but sure I thought thim savages wore no clothes, and he has an iligant blue coat an' red tie. I wondher would it be any good to thry the Irish wid him;' and, as an experiment, he said something in the richest Munster dialect. The Canadian's politeness was almost forgotten in his stare of surprise, and he took the earliest opportunity of changing his place, and viewing Andy respectfully from afar.
But if it had a repellent effect on the habitan, it exerted a strong attractive force upon other of the passengers. Mr. Callaghan was never happier than when at the focus of a knot of his countrymen, for his talents were essentially social; and before the evening was over, his musical feats with voice and violin had so charmed the aforesaid Canadian, that he came up and made him another of the polite bows.