“It certainly must be some very extraordinary service that he wishes me to render him!” thought I. But I answered:
“Very well. As soon as the people are sober enough to behave themselves, send them off with the canvas and some lashing, and I will tell them what I want done.”
“Oi’ll do that same,” answered O’Gorman. “And now,” he continued, “I suppose you and the lady ’d loike a run ashore, wouldn’t ye?”
“Yes, certainly,” I answered, “but not to-day. We will wait until everybody has had time to get completely sober again. I do not choose that the lady should be subjected to the annoyance of encountering, and perhaps being insulted by, some half-drunken lout. But you will not require all the boats, I suppose, so you had better send off the smallest one, with a pair of oars, that we may have the means of going to and from the ship and the shore at our own pleasure, and independently of your people.”
This was too much for the fiery temper of the Irishman; genial and obliging as he had striven to be, it had been clearly apparent to me that he was growing increasingly restive under the lengthening list of my demands, and now this cool requisition of a boat was the last straw that broke the camel’s back—or, in other words, exhausted the Irishman’s slender stock of patience; he looked at me with blazing eyes for a moment, and then rapped out:
“Boat is it, thin? The divil a boat will I let ye have; if ye want a boat, go ashore and build one for yoursilf. And go to the divil and get your awning, and your canvas, and your lashings, and your cook, too, begorra! for sorra a one of anny of thim will ye get from me! I was a fool to promise ye annything, but I wanted your help, and I thought Oi’d get it by humourin’ ye. But now, be jabers, Oi’ll make ye help me, whither ye like it or not; and the divil a thing will I do for ye in return!”
“What is it you want me to do for you?” asked I quietly, determined to keep my temper whatever might happen, and curious to know what service it could possibly be that had caused the fellow to constrain himself so far in the endeavour to conciliate me.
“I want ye to do this—and, understand me, ye’ll have to do it, whither it plaises ye or not,” he answered. “There’s a spot somewhere on that bit of an oiland,”—indicating the small islet opposite which the brig was moored—“that I want to find. Whin I first read the paper that speaks of it, it seemed the simplest thing in the worruld to come here and put me fut on it; but now that Oi’m here, and have seen the place, by me sowl I can’t see or understand how Oi’m to go about it. And no more can anny of the rest of us. So the long and the short of it is, misther, that you’ll have to find the place for us.”
“What do your instructions direct you to do?” demanded I.
“My instructions, is it?” repeated O’Gorman. “Oh, begorra, they’re simple enough. They say,”—here he paused, fumbled in his breast-pocket, and presently produced the dirty, greasy slip of paper, with the appearance of which I was now becoming familiar, and carefully unfolding it, read: