Chapter Eighteen.
Caught in a Pampero.
“Sure an’ you must bear in mind, messmates,” commenced Pat, coming outside his galley and leaning against the side in free-and-easy fashion, “when I wint aboord that vessel in Noo Yark, I was a poor gossoon, badly off for clothes, having no more slops than I could carry handy in a hankercher.”
“Not like your splendiferous kit now,” observed Sails, the sail-maker, with a nudge in Jorrocks’ ribs to point the joke—the cook’s gear in the way of raiment being none of the best.
“No, not a ha’porth ov it,” proceeded the Irishman, taking no notice of the sarcastic allusion to his wardrobe. “To till the truth, I’d only jist what I stood up in, for I’d hard times ov it in the States, an’ was glad enough to ship in the schooner to git out ov the way ov thim rowdy Yankees, bad cess to ’em! They trate dacint Irishmen no betther nor if they were dirthy black nayghurs, anyhow! How so be it, as soon as I got afloat ag’in, I made up my mind to git some traps togither as soon as I could.”
“Let you alone for that!” interposed Sails again, maliciously.
“Arrah, be aisy now, old bradawl and palm-string, or I’ll bring ye up with a round turn!” exclaimed Pat, getting nettled at the remark.
“Why can’t you let him be?” cried the rest, thereupon. “Heave ahead, cooky;” and, so encouraged, the Irishman once more made a fresh start, declaring, however, that if he were once more interrupted they’d “never hear nothing” of what he was going to tell them, “at all, at all!”