Before I entered, Mr Treenail took me to one side—“Tom, Tom Cringle, you must go into this crimp shop; pass yourself off for an apprentice of the Guava, bound for Trinidad, the ship that arrived just as we started, and pick up all the knowledge you can regarding the whereabouts of the men, for we are, as you know, cruelly ill manned, and must replenish as we best may.” I entered the house, after having agreed to rejoin my superior officer, so soon as I considered I had obtained my object. I rapped at the inner door, in which there was a small unglazed aperture cut, about four inches square; and I now, for the first time, perceived that a strong glare of light was cast into the lobby, where I stood, by a large argand with a brilliant reflector, that like a magazine lantern had been mortised into the bulkhead, at a height of about two feet above the door in which the spy-hole was cut. My first signal was not attended to; I rapped again, and looking round I noticed Mr Treenail flitting backwards and forwards across the doorway, in the rain with his pale face and his sharp nose, with the sparkling drop at the end on’t, glancing in the light of the lamp. I heard a step within, and a very pretty face now appeared at the wicket.
“Who are you saking here, an’ please ye?”
“No one in particular, my dear; but if you don’t let me in, I shall be lodged in jail before five minutes be over.”
“I can’t help that, young man,” said she; “but where are ye from, darling?”
“Hush!—I am run from the Guava, now lying at the Cove.”
“Oh,” said my beauty, “come in;” and she opened the door, but still kept it on the chain in such a way, that although, by bobbing, I creeped and slid in beneath it, yet a common-sized man could not possibly have squeezed himself through. The instant I entered, the door was once more banged to, and the next moment I was ushered into the kitchen, a room about fourteen feet square, with a well sanded floor, a huge dresser on one side, and over against it a respectable show of pewter dishes in racks against the wall. There was a long stripe of a deal, table in the middle of the room—but no tablecloth—at the bottom of which sat a large, bloated, brandy, or rather whisky-faced savage, dressed in a shabby great-coat of the hodden grey worn by the Irish peasantry, dirty swan down vest, and greasy corduroy breeches, worsted stockings, and well-patched shoes; he was smoking a long pipe. Around the table sat about a dozen seamen, from whose wet jackets and trowsers the heat of the blazing fire, that roared up the chimney, sent up a smoky steam that cast a halo round the lamp, that depended from the roof, and hung down within two feet of the table, stinking abominably of coarse whale oil. They were, generally speaking, hardy, weather beaten men, and the greater proportion half, or more than half drunk. When I entered, I walked up to the landlord.
“Yo ho, my young un, whence and whither bound, my hearty?”
“The first don’t signify much to you,” said I, “seeing I have wherewithal in the locker to pay my shot; and as to the second, of that hereafter; so, old boy, let’s have some grog, and then say if you can ship me with one of them cowers that are lying alongside the quay?”
“My eye, what a lot of brass that small chap has!” grumbled mine host.
“Why, my lad, we shall see to-morrow morning; but you gammons so bad about the rhino, that we must prove you a bit; so, Kate, my dear,”—to the pretty girl who had let me in—“score a pint of rum against—why, what is your name?”