At night the room where we slept was a perfect Babel. Men talked of nothing but the voyage and the campaign that was to follow, and wished the marching orders had been for to-morrow instead of next week.
Suddenly (and I don’t exactly know why) my master remembered my existence, and I heard him call out,—
“Does any of you boys know anything about a watch, at all?”
“Duck Downie does,” replied one or two voices.
“Duck Downie, me jewil, will ye step this way just?” called out my master, “and cast your eye on my watch?”
The gentleman rejoicing in the name of Duck Downie was a ferocious-looking little fellow who had, before he decided to devote his energies to the extermination of her Majesty’s foes, been a watchmaker’s apprentice. He came, forward at the invitation, and cast his eye in the direction indicated. It was evidently the first time he had known that Paddy so much as owned a watch; for he stared hard at me, and then said with a knowing wink,—
“Did he struggle much?”
“Faith and he did a wee bit, Duck, but so did I too, ye see,” said Paddy, entering into the joke.
“Let’s have a look at him,” said Duck, taking me and stripping the coat off my back. “Give us the key.”
“The kay!” said Paddy, whose notions of a watch’s interior were delightfully vague; “sure there’s no kay. Here, Edward I will ye lend Mister Downie a kay!”