“'Come tell me, dearest mother, what makes me father shtay
Or what can be th' reason that he's so long away?'
'Oh, howld yer tongue, me darlin' son, yer tears do grieve me sore,
I fear he has been murdhered in the fair av Turloughmore!'
“Sure, I haven't got the heart to dhrive the head av this monkey wrench into that bald shpot. If he'd hair there I wouldn't mind.” Mr. Reardon sighed dismally. “I'll have to wrap a waddin' av waste around me weapon, so I'll neither kill nor mangle but lay thim out wit' wan good crack—
“'It is on the firrst av August, the truth I will declare,
Those people they assimbled that day all at the fair,
But little was their notion that evil was in shtore,
All by the bloody Peelers at the fair av Turloughmore.'
“I must practice crackin' the divils! Sure, 'twould be an awful thing to have the sin av murrder on me sowl—not that 'tis murrder to kill a Dutchman that's a self-confessed pirate into the bargain. Shtill, 'tis a terrible t'ought to carry to the grave—”
Wham! Mr. Reardon brought his padded wrench down on his defenseless bed. “Too harrd,” he told himself. “Sure a blow like that on top av the head would knock out the teeth av the divil himself! Less horse-power, Terence!”
Wham! He tried it again, this time with better results. For five minutes he beat the bedclothes; then his spirits rose and, like the mercurial Celt that he was, he chanted blithely a verse from “The Night Before Larry Was Stretched”:
“'Though, sure 'tis the best way to die,
Oh, the divil a betther a-livin'!
For sure whin the gallows is high,
Your journey is shorter to heaven;
But what harasses Larry the most,
An' makes his poor sowl melancholy,
Is to think av the time whin his ghost
Will come in a sheet to sweet Molly!
Oh, sure, 'twill kill her alive!'”
He slipped the short, heavy monkey wrench up his right sleeve, walked out on deck and stood at the corner of the house, smoking placidly and gazing down on the main deck forward. The look-out on the forecastle head was not visible in the darkness, but Mr. Reardon was not worried about that. “For why,” he argued to himself, “should I go lookin' for the skut whin if I wait a bit he'll come fluttherin' into me hand?”
He did. At five minutes after ten Mr. Schultz hailed the look-out in German, and although Mr. Reardon spoke no German, yet did he understand that order. Mr. Schultz, a victim of habit, desired the look-out to go to the galley and bring up some hot coffee for him and the helmsman. It was the custom aboard the Narcissus, as it is in most Pacific Coast boats, for the cook, just before retiring, to brew a pot of coffee, drain off the grounds and leave it to simmer on the galley range where, at intervals of two hours during the night, the watch could come and help itself.
Terence Reardon knew that the look-out, after heating the coffee and bringing a few cups up on the bridge, would return to the galley and partake of a cup and a bite himself.