“I got out of the town somehow, for I had never been out of it before, greatly tempted to stop and look at the fine shops, all lighting up so gaily, but I was resolved to get into the country. I knew nothing of the locality, had no idea where I was going or what I was going to do; the only thing that occupied my mind was, that a shoemaker I would not be. My first night was passed under a hedge; luckily it was in the summer months—August, I think—so I was not much worse lodged than usual.
“As soon as I awoke I made a start of it, walked a mile or two along the bye-paths, till I came to a small cabin—a labourer’s cabin. The father, mother, and seven children were eating their breakfast—that is, the table was covered with a lot of smoking hot potatoes, and a pile of salt in the middle. The sight made me hungry, so I asked them to let me join them, as I had had neither supper nor breakfast.
“‘Bedad, help yourself and welcome,’ said the man, and I did.
“In this manner, sleeping under hedges and haystacks, and eating potatoes, whenever I could get them, I travelled for five days, till I was beginning to get foot-sore, when I suddenly beheld the sea from the top of a hill, with a large town at the foot, and a number of vessels lying alongside of a quay. To my boyish eyes, the sea was a glorious object, and I said to myself, ‘I will be a sailor.’ I knew what a ship was, and what a sailor was, for I remember reading a penny ‘Robinson Crusoe,’ and being in raptures with it, and vowing at the time I would be a sailor. I met a man driving a flock of sheep, and I asked him the name of the town.
“‘Bantry,’ says he, and I walked on. I thought the sight I viewed from that hill one of the finest I ever saw, and faith I think so still; as I did when years afterwards I stood upon the same spot, having ascended the hill for the very purpose of bringing my boyish recollection more vivid to my mind. I was descending the hill, a good carriage road winding down it, when I heard a post-chaise coming rapidly after me. I turned and soon perceived that an accident had happened. The pole chain had snapped, and the carriage, which was a gentleman’s, laden with a good deal of luggage, was pressing on the back of one horse and knocking him down, whilst the other was kicking and plunging; and a lady with her head out of the window calling out to the postillion to stop: but you might as well have tried to stop a nor’-wester with a lady’s parasol. Just as they reached me, the horse, whose pole chain was broken, fell, the carriage gave a lurch, and over it went on the side next the precipice; the door was burst open, and out rolled a little boy scarcely two years old, and with him a curious woolly dog, a poodle; I did not know its name then. Though stupefied and terrified when I saw the child tumble out, the lady’s shriek roused me. I rushed over the side, caught the child’s garments in one hand, and we rolled down the precipice together some twenty or thirty yards. I luckily grasped a branch of furze just as we were going to topple over the edge of a cliff, full fifty or sixty feet perpendicular, and held on like grim death, still keeping a fast hold of the little boy, the confounded dog sticking to me like a leech, as if it was I that was rolling over the precipice, not his young master, for my special amusement. He bit me two or three times, for I could not help myself; if I let go the child he would tumble over the edge, and if I let go the furze we were sure both to go. I looked up and beheld the lady and another female above, screaming and clapping their hands, and a gentleman cautiously groping his way down to where we were.
“‘Hold on, my brave boy!’ shouted the gentleman, in intense anxiety, ‘and I’ll provide for you for life.’ On he came cautiously. I could not stir, for the weight of the child, half hanging over the cliff on my one hand, was quite as much as I could bear. At length the gentleman reached us, and, holding on by a stout branch of a furze with one hand, he dragged me and my burden up out of danger, and clasping the frightened and crying child in his arms, he said, ‘God be praised! but for this brave boy I should have lost you, my beloved child,’ and he repeatedly kissed the boy till he ceased crying; the lady and her attendant from above anxiously and wildly gazing down on us. The gentleman was in a naval uniform—of course, I did not know it was one then—but his gold epaulette on his shoulders and gold lace attracted my gaze.
“‘Now, my fine little fellow, let us get back to the road; luckily we have all escaped, and the postillion is gone into Bantry for help and a post-chaise.’ Well, we soon got up, and then the child was embraced and kissed and made much of by the mother, who was very handsome and young. The chaise or carriage lay on its beam end, that is, it had overturned on its front; so the child was leaning on the door when the accident happened, and its swinging open threw him out.
“‘And now, my fine little fellow,’ said the gentleman, sitting down on one of his own trunks thrown out on the road, ‘who are you, and where do you live, for I owe you my child’s life?’
“‘I lives nowhere, sir,’ I replied; and, determined to tell the truth, I said I was a foundling, and had run away because they wanted to make a shoemaker of me, and that I would rather go to sea.
“‘Go to sea!’ said the gentleman, his handsome wife standing near us, with her pretty child clasped in her arms; ‘by Jove, that’s just where I am going, and you shall go with me, if you like, and I will take care of you, for it appears by your own account that no one has any claim to you.’