Nevertheless, such a society in my juvenile estimation, during my short escapade from the middy’s berth, had its charms, and I was rolling in with a tolerable swagger, when Mr Treenail pinched my arm.
“Mr Cringle, come here, into my room.”
From the way in which he spoke, I imagined, in my innocence, that his room was at my elbow; but no such thing—we had to ascend a long, and not overclean staircase, to the fourth floor, before we were shown into a miserable little double-bedded room. So soon as we had entered, the lieutenant shut the door.
“Tom,” said he, “I have taken a fancy to you, and therefore I applied for leave to bring you with me; but I must expose you to some danger, and, I will allow, not altogether in a very creditable way either. You must enact the spy for a short space.”
I did not like the notion certainly, but I had little time for consideration.
“Here,” he continued—“here is a bundle.” He threw it on the floor. “You must rig in the clothes it, contains, and make your way into the celebrated crimp shop in the neighbourhood, and pick up all the information you can regarding the haunts of the pressable men at Cove, especially with regard to the ten seamen who have run from the West Indiaman we left below. You know the Admiral has forbidden pressing in Cork, so you must contrive to frighten the blue jackets down to Cove, by representing yourself as an apprentice of one of the merchant vessels, who had run from his indentures, and that you had narrowly escaped from a press-gang this very night here.”
I made no scruples, but forthwith arrayed myself in the slops contained in the bundle; in a pair of shag trowsers, red flannel shirt, coarse blue cloth jacket, and no waistcoat.
“Now,” said Mr Treenail, “stick a quid of tobacco in your cheek, and take the cockade out of your hat; or stop, leave it, and ship this striped woollen night-cap—so—and come along with me.”
We left the house, and walked half a mile down the Quay.
Presently we arrived before a kind of low grog-shop—a bright lamp was flaring in the breeze at the door, one of the panes of the glass of it being broken.