"
This called forth another volley of oaths and unsavoury exclamations, and
all was bustle and confusion, and packing up of bundles, and settling of
reckonings.
"Where," said one of the seamen,--"where do you go to, my lad?"
"Why, if I can't get shipped to--night, I shall trundles down to Cove
immediately, so as to cross at Passage before daylight, and take my chance
of shipping with some of the outward--bound that are to sail, if the wind
holds, the day after to--morrow. There is to be no pressing when blue
Peter flies at the fore--and that was hoisted this afternoon, I know, and
the foretopsail will be loose to--morrow."
"D--n my wig, but the small chap is right," roared one.
"I've a bloody great mind to go down with him," stuttered another, after
several unavailing attempts to weigh from the bench, where he had brought
himself to anchor.
"Hurrah!" yelled a third, as he hugged me, and nearly suffocated me with
his maudling caresses, "I trundles wid you too, my darling, boy the piper!"
"Have with you, boy--have with him," shouted half--a--dozen other voices,
while each stuck his oaken twig through the handkerchief that held his
bundle, and shouldered it, clapping his straw or tarpaulin hat, with a slap
on the crown, on one side of his head, and staggering and swaying about
under the influence of the poteen, and slapping his thigh, as he bent
double, laughing like to split himself, till the water ran over his cheeks
from his drunken half--shut eyes, while jets of tobacco juice were
squirting in all directions.
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