At last, one morning, on going to a shipbroker, who had promised to let me know of any vessel putting into Plymouth on her way to Cork, he told me that one had just arrived, and would sail again in a few hours. I at once went on board the Nancy schooner, and engaged a passage for Larry and myself, and then hurried back to wish Mrs Nettleship and her daughter good-bye. My old shipmates returned with me, and Larry carried our few traps over his shoulder, as I had not possessed a chest since mine was lost in the Liffy.
“Good-bye, Paddy, old fellow,” cried Nettleship. “If I get appointed to a ship I’ll let you know, and you must exert your interest to join her; and I hope Tom also will find his way aboard. We have been four years together without so much as a shadow of a quarrel; and if we were to spend another four years in each other’s company, I’m sure it would be the same.”
Tom merely wrung my hand; his heart was too full to speak.
“Good-bye, Mr Pim,” said Larry, as the schooner’s boat was waiting for us at the quay. “Your honour saved my life, and I would have been after saving yours, if I had had the chance, a dozen times over.”
“You saved it once, at least, Larry, when you helped to get me out of the water as the boat was leaving the Cerberus and I hope that we may be again together, to give you another chance.”
“There’s nothing I’d like better. May Heaven’s blessing go with your honour,” said Larry, as Tom held out his hand and shook his warmly.
Our friends stood on the shore as we pulled across the Catwater to the schooner, which lay at the entrance. Directly we were on board she got under weigh, and with a fair breeze we stood down Plymouth Sound. She was a terribly slow sailer, and we had a much longer passage to Cork than I had expected. We had no longer any fear of being snapped up by a privateer, but, seeing her style of sailing, I hoped that we should not be caught in a gale on a lee shore, or we should have run a great chance of being wrecked.
Larry made friends with all on board, keeping them alive with his fiddle, which he was excessively proud of having saved through so many and various dangers.
“Shure, I wouldn’t change it for all the gold in the Ville de Paris, if it could be fished up from the bottom of the say,” he exclaimed, “for that couldn’t cheer up the hearts of my shipmates as my old fiddle can be doing. Won’t I be after setting them toeing and heeling it when we get back to Ballinahone!”
At length our eyes were rejoiced by a sight of the entrance to Cork Harbour, and the wind being fair, we at once ran up to Passage, where I engaged a boat to take us to Cork. As we had no luggage except what Larry could carry, and he wouldn’t let me lift an article, we proceeded at once to the inn at which my uncle and I had put up.