“Na’, na’, no regular signal; but ye might hae run up a wee bittie—just eneugh tae catch my e’en. Ay, an’ will ye nae come aboard?”
“We’ll hae to talk owre it, Captain.”
Well; they did talk over the matter, cautiously and discreetly, for a few hours, for Captain Mackellar was a hard man at a bargain, and he would not agree to give them a passage at anything less than two pound a head. At last negotiations were concluded, the men got aboard the Bonnie Doon and piloted her out of the lagoon. They reached the Clyde in safety, having on the voyage found that Captain Mackellar was a religious man and never used any but the most God-fearing of oaths at his crew.
“Weel, ma freends,” said he, as they approached Greenock—“Weel, I’m in hopes that ye’ll be paying me the siller this e’en.”
“Ay, mon, that we will, certes,” said the passengers. “In the meantime, we’d tak’ the liberty o’ calling your attention to a wee bit claim we hae japped doon on a bit slip o’ paper. It’s three poon nine for harbour dues that ye owe us, Captain Mackellar, and twa poon ten for pilotage—it’s compulsory at yon island, so maybe ye’ll mak’ it convenient to hand us owre the differs when we land. Ay, Douglas Mackellar, ye shouldn’a try to get the better o’ brither Scots.”
Captain Douglas Mackellar was a God-fearing man, but he said “Dom!”
I once had some traffic with a newspaper office that had suffered from a border raid. In the month of June a managing editor had been imported from the Clyde, and although previously no “hand” from north of the Tweed had ever been located within its walls, yet before December had come, to take a stroll through any department of that office was like taking a walk down Sauchiehall Street, or the Broomielaw. The foreman printer used weird Scotch oaths, and his son was the “devil”—pronounced deevil. His brother-in-law was the day foreman, and his brother-in-law’s son was a junior clerk. The stereotyper was the stepson of the night foreman’s mother, and he had a nephew who was the machinist, with a brother for his assistant. The managing editor’s brother was sub-editor, and the man to whom his wife had been engaged before she married him, was assistant-editor. The assistant-editor’s uncle became the head of the advertising department, and he had three sons; two of them became clerks with progressive salaries, and the third became the chief reporter, also with a progressive salary. In fact, the paper became a one-family show—it was like a “nicht wi’ Burns,”—and no paper was ever worked better. It never paid less than fifteen per cent.
A rather more amusing experience was of the overrunning of a newspaper office by the wild Irishry. The organ in question had a somewhat chequered career during the ten months that it existed. At one period—for even as long as a month—it was understood to pay its expenses; but when it failed to pay its expenses, no one else paid them; hence in time it came to be looked upon as a rather unsound property. The original editor, a man of ability and culture, declined to be dictated to in some delicate political question by the proprietor, and took his departure without going through the empty formality—it was, after all, only a point of etiquette—of asking for the salary that was due to him. For some weeks the paper was run—if something that scarcely crawled could be said to be run—without an editor; then a red-headed Irishman of the Namgay Doola type appeared—like a meteor surrounded by a nimbus of brogue—in the editor’s room. His name was O’Keegan, but lest this name might be puzzling to the English nation, he weakly gave in to their prejudices and simplified it into O’Geogheghoiran. He was a Master of Arts of the Royal University in Ireland, and a winner of gold medals for Greek composition, as well as philosophy. He said he had passed at one time at the head of the list of Indian Civil Service candidates, but was rejected by the doctor on account of his weak lungs. When I met him his lungs had apparently overcome whatever weakness they may once have had. He had a colloquial acquaintance with Sanscrit, and he had also been one of the best billiard markers in all Limerick.
I fancy he knew something about every science and art, except the art and science of editing a daily newspaper on which the payment of salaries was intermittent. In the course of a week a man from Galway had taken the vacant and slightly injured chair of the sub-editor, a man from Waterford said he had been appointed chief of the reporting staff, a man from Tipperary said he was the new art editor and musical critic, and a man from Kilkenny said he had been invited by his friend Mr. O’Geogheghoiran to “do the reviews.” I have the best of reasons for knowing that he fancied “doing the reviews” meant going into the park upon military field-days, and reporting thereupon.
In short, the newspaper staff was an Irish blackthorn.