"Ask me anything else," said he, "and I will give it you."
"Well then," said Maria, "give us Felim O'Shaugnessy?"
The captain was equally inflexible.
"Come, come, your honour," said Judy, "we must not stand upon trifles nowadays. I'll give you a kiss, if you'll give me Pat Flannagan."
"And I another," said Maria, "for Felim."
The captain had one seated on each side of him; his head turned like a dog-vane in a gale of wind; he did not know which to begin with; the most ineffable good humour danced in his eyes, and the ladies saw at once that the day was their own. Such is the power of beauty, that this lord of the ocean was fain to strike to it. Judy laid a kiss on his right cheek; Maria matched it on his left; the captain was the happiest of mortals.
"Well, then," said he, "you have your wish; take your two men, for I am in a hurry to make sail."
"Is it sail ye are after making; and do ye mane to take all those pretty craturs away wid ye? No, faith! another kiss, and another man."
I am not going to relate how many kisses these lovely girls bestowed on this envied captain. If such are captain's perquisites, who would not be a captain? Suffice it to say, they released the whole of their countrymen, and returned on board in triumph. The story reached Halifax, where the good-humoured admiral only said he was sorry he was not a captain, and all the happy society made themselves very merry with it. The captain, who is as brave as he is good, was promoted soon after, entirely from his own intrinsic merit, but not for this action, in which candour and friendship must acknowledge he was defeated. The Lord-Chancellor used to say, he always laughed at the settlement of pin-money, as ladies were either kicked out of it or kissed out of it; but his lordship, in the whole course of his legal practice, never saw a captain of a man-of-war kissed out of forty men by two pretty Irish girls. After this, who would not shout, "Erin go bragh!"
Dashing with a fine breeze out of the harbour, I saw with joy the field of fortune open to me, holding out a fair promise of glory and riches. "Adieu!" said I, in my heart, "adieu, ye lovely Nova Scotians! learn in future to distinguish between false glitter and real worth. Me ye prized for a handsome person and a smooth tongue, while you foolishly rejected men of ten times my worth, because they wanted the outward blandishments."