This remark produced another roar of laughter from my messmates.
“What are you after laughing at? I exclaimed. If any of you will honour us with a visit at Castle Ballinahone, you’ll be able to compare the two places, and my father and mother, and brothers and sisters, will be mighty plaised to see you.”
The invitation was at once accepted by all hands, though for the present my family were pretty safe from the chances of an inundation of nautical heroes.
“And what sort of girls are your sisters?” asked Sims, who, I had discovered, was always ready for some impudence.
“Shure they’re Irish young ladies, and that’s all I intend to say about them,” I answered, giving him a look which made him hold his tongue.
Still, in spite of the bantering I received, I got on wonderfully well with my new messmates; and though I had a fight now and then, I generally, being older than many of them, and stronger than others who had been some time at sea, came off victorious; and as I was always ready to befriend, and never bullied, my weaker messmates, I was on very good terms with all of them.
Tom Pim took a liking to me from the first, and though he didn’t require my protection, I felt ready to afford it him on all occasions. He was sometimes quizzed by Sims and others for his small size. “I don’t mind it,” he answered. “Though I’m little, I’m good. If I’ve a chance, I’ll do something to show what’s in me.” The chance came sooner than he expected. There were a good many raw hands lately entered, Larry among others. From the first he showed no fear of going aloft, looking upon the business much as he would have done climbing a high tree; but how the ropes were rove, and what were their uses, he naturally had no conception. “Is it to the end of them long boughs there I’ve got to go, Misther Terence?” he asked the first time he was ordered aloft, looking up at the yards as he encountered me, I having been sent forward with an order to the third lieutenant.
“There’s no doubt about it, Larry,” I said; “but take care you catch hold of one rope before you let go of the other,” said I, giving him the same advice which I had myself received.
“Shure I’ll be after doing that same, Misther Terence,” he answered, as, following the example of the other men, he sprang into the rigging. I watched him going up as long as I could, and he seemed to be getting on capitally, exactly imitating the movements of the other men.
A day or two afterwards we were all on deck, the men exercising in reefing and furling sails. The new hands were ordered to lay out on the yards, and a few of the older ones to show them what to do. Larry obeyed with alacrity; no one would have supposed that he had been only a few times before aloft. I had to return to the quarter-deck, where I was standing with Tom Pim, and we were remarking the activity displayed by the men. I saw Larry on the starboard fore-topsail yard-arm, and had just left Tom, being sent with a message to the gun-room, when, as my head was flush with the hatchway, I saw an object drop from the yard-arm into the water. It looked more like a large ball falling than a human being, and it didn’t occur to me that it was the latter until I heard the cry of “Man overboard!” Hastening up again, I sprang into the mizzen rigging, from which, just before I got there, Tom Pim had plunged off into the water. It was ebb tide, and a strong current was running out of the river Lee past the ship. The man who had fallen had not sunk, but was fast drifting astern, and seemed unconscious, for he was not struggling, lying like a log on the water. Tom Pim, with rapid strokes, was swimming after him. I heard the order given to lower a boat. Though not a great swimmer, I was about to follow Tom to try and help him, when a strong arm held me back.