“That’s jist what I said to meself, sor,” cried Dinny; “but the baste wouldn’t listen. ‘Och!’ he says, ‘what would my mother’s falings be if she was to hear that instead of dying properly of a broken head she heard that I was blown all into smithereens, widout a dacent-sized pace left for the praste to say a blessing over?’ ‘Ah, Dinny Kelly!’ I says, ‘that’s a mane dirthy excuse, because ye’re afraid; for the divil a bit wid your mother care what became of such an ill-looking, black buccaneer of a blagguard as ye are!’”
“Why, you’re talking about yourself!” cried Humphrey.
“For sartin, sir. Sure, there isn’t another boy in the whole crew that I dare to spake to in such an onrespectful way.”
“Why, Dinny, man, you did go?”
“Yes, sor, I wint, but in a way that I’m quite ashamed of. I didn’t think I was such a coward. But there! I niver turned back from a shtick in me loife, and I faced the powdher afther all; but oh, it’s ashamed of meself intirely I am! A Kelly wouldn’t have felt like that if it hadn’t been for the climate. It’s the hot weather takes it out of ye, sor. Why I felt over that job as a man couldn’t fale in me own counthry.”
“Well, go on.”
“That’s what I did, sor. I stuck close to the captain’s tail as he wint sthraight up to the door—ye know the door, sor, where the owld gintleman’s sitting over the porch, looking down at ye wid a plisant smile of his own.”
“Yes, yes, I know. Go on.”
“Well, sor, I did go on; and there stood Black Mazzard wid the two biggest pishtols we have on the primises, wan in each hand and the other shtuck in his belt. ‘Kim another shtep,’ he says, ‘and I’ll blow the place about your heads!’ Och, and I looked up thin to ask a blessing on meself before I wint up in such a hurry that I hadn’t time to confess; and bedad there was the owld gintleman expanding his mouth into the widest grin I iver saw in me life!”
“And the Commodore, what did he do?” cried Humphrey, impatiently.