“And he gave me his hand, and truth, boys, it felt as cold and damp as the tail av a fish. And more betoken, I couldn’t help noticing that all the time he was speakin’ to me, he kept changing his size. At one moment he didn’t look a morsel bigger than a pint bottle, and next—troth, he was tall enough to spit on me hat.
“‘But two heads are better than one,’ says I to myself; ‘next mornin’ I’ll go and see the priest.’
“‘It was a mere optical allusion,’ said the priest, when I told him how the gintleman was sometimes big and sometimes small, a ‘mere optical allusion, Rory,’ he says; ‘had you been tasting the crayture?’
“‘Troth, maybe I had,’ says I.
“‘Well,’ says he, ‘that was it. To my thinking this sailor gintleman is an honest man enough. Meet him, Rory, in Dublin as he axed you, and sail with him, Tim; sure it’ll make a man o’ ye, and your mother and Molly as well, Rory.’
“‘Well,’ says I, ‘give me your blessin’, your riverance, and I’ll be after going.’
“‘I’ll not be denying ye that same,’ says his riverance.
“But it was mother and Molly that wept when I told them where I was going. Och! they did weep, to be sure; but when I told them of all the foine countries I’d see, and all the goold I’d bring home, troth it’s brighten up they did wonderful, and for all the fortnight before I sailed we did nothing but talk, and talk, and talk, bar that all the time they were talking it is mending me shirts and darning me stockings the dear craytures were.
“Well wi’ this and wi’ that the time passed away quickly enough, and at long last I bade them good-bye, and with a big lump in me throat, away I started for Dublin Bay.
“I mind it well, boys; it was the dark hour av midnight when we got up anchor and sailed away, and there was such a thunderstorm rattling over the big hill o’ Howth as I’d never seen the likes of in my born days. There wasn’t a breath av wind either, but somehow that didn’t make a morsel av difference to the ship one way or another. She was a quare ship.