“I must kape ’em stirrin’ their stoomps, or ilse, sure, the spalpeens ’ud strike worrk the minnit me back’s toorned,” said he on resuming his talk with me, as if in explanation of this little interlude. “Yez aid y’r name’s Grame, didn’t ye? I once knew a Grame belongin’ to Cork, an’ he wor a pig jobber. S’pose now, he warn’t y’r ould father, loike?”
“Certainly not!” cried I, indignantly. “My father is a clergyman and a gentleman and an Englishman, and lives down in the country. Our name, too, is Graham and not Grame, as you pronounce it.”
“’Pon me conshinsh, I axes y’r pardin, sorr. Sure, an’ I didn’t mane no harrm,” said my friend, apologising in the most handsome way for the unintentional insult; and, putting out a brawny hairy paw like that of Esau’s, he gave a grip to my poor little mite of a hand that made each knuckle crack, as he introduced himself in rough and hearty sailor fashion. “Me name’s Tim Rooney, as I tould you afore, Misther Gray-ham—sure, an’ it’s fond I am ov bacon, avic, an’ ham, too, by the same token! I’d have ye to know, as ye’re a foorst-class apprentice—which kills me enthirely wid the laffin’ sure!—that I’m the bosun av the Silver Quane; an’ as we’re agoin’ to be shipmets togither, I hopes things’ll be moighty plisint atwane us, sure.”
“I’m sure I hope so, too,” I replied eagerly, thinking him an awfully jolly fellow, and very unlike the man I imagined him to be at first; and we then shook hands again to cement the compact of eternal friendship, although I took care this time that my demonstrative boatswain should not give me so forcible a squeeze with his huge fist as before, observing as I looked round the vessel and up at her towering masts overhead: “What a splendid ship!”
“Aye, she’s all that, ivery inch of her from truck to kelson,” he answered equally enthusiastically; “an’ so’s our foorst mate, a sailor all over from the sole av his fut to the crown av his hid.”
“And the captain,” I inquired, “what sort of a man is he?”
“Arrah, now you’re axin’ questions,” he rejoined with a sly look from his roguish eyes. “D’ye happen to know what’s inside av an egg, now, whither it’s a chicken, sure, or ownly the yoke an’ white, till ye bhrake the shill?”
“No,” said I laughing. “But, we don’t find chickens generally in our eggs at home.”
“Wait till ye thry one on shipboord,” he retorted. “Still, ye can’t deny now that ye don’t know for sure what’s insoide the shill till ye bhrake it, an’ say for yoursilf—eh?”
“No,” I assented to this reasoning; “but, I don’t see what that’s got to do with the captain.”