“But what did you do with the Manilla hemp arter you unrove the hawser?” asked Jorrocks, his curiosity now roused by the matter-of-fact way in which the Irishman told his story—relating it as if every word was “the true truth,” according to the French idiom.
“Why, you omahdaun, I jist worked it into a guernsey, knitting it from the nick downwards, the same as the ladies, bless ’em! do them woollen fallals that they wear round theirselves.”
“You wove it into a guernsey?” cried Sails, in astonishment.
“Aye, I did that so,” returned Pat; “and wore it, too, all round Cape Horn!”
“Then let me look at you a little closer,” cried the sail-maker, pulling Doolan towards him, and passing his hand over his nose.
“What the blazes are ye afther, man?” asked Pat, not being able to make out what the other meant by handling him in that fashion.
“Only seeing if you had my mark,” said Sails, calmly; “and here it is, by all that’s powerful!”
“Your mark, Sails? What on airth d’ye mane?”
“Why, whenever I sews up a chap in his hammock as dies at sea, which I’ve often had to do as part of the sail-maker’s duty in the many ships I’ve been in, I allers makes a p’int of sticking my needle through the corpse’s nose, to prevent him slipping out of his covering.”
“What!” ejaculated the Irishman, startled for the moment out of his native keenness of wit; “an’ is it m’aning to say as it’s a could corpus I’ve been, an’ that I’ve bin did an’ buried in the bottom of the say?”