Tom Cringle's Log

of war lovely craft-bands playing-a good deal of the pomp and circumstance of war. Next forenoon, Mr Treenail, the second lieutenant, sent for me.

"Mr Cringle," said he, 'you have an uncle in Cork, I believe?"

I said I had.

"I am going there on duty to-night; I dare say, if you asked the captain to let you accompany me, he would do so. This was too good an offer not to be taken advantage of. I plucked up courage, made my bow, asked leave, and got it; and the evening found my friend the lieutenant, and myself, after a ride of three hours, during which I, for one, had my bottom sheathing grievously rubbed, and a considerable botheration at crossing the Ferry at Passage, safe in our inn at Cork. I soon found out that the object of my superior officer was to gain information amongst the crimp shops, when ten men who had run from one of the West Indiamen, waiting at Cove for convoy, were stowed away, but I was not let farther into the secret; so I set out to pay my visit, and after passing a pleasant evening with my friends, Mr and Mrs Job Cringle, the lieutenant dropped in upon us about nine o'clock. He was heartily welcomed, and under the plea of our being obliged to return to the ship early next morning, we soon took leave, and returned to the inn. As I was turning into the public room, the door was open, and I could see it full of blowsy-faced monsters, glimmering and jabbering, through the mist of hot brandy grog and gin twist; with poodle Benjamins, and great-coats, and cloaks of all sorts and sizes, steaming on their pegs, with Barcelonas and comforters, and damp travelling caps of seal-skin, and blue cloth, and tartan, arranged above the same. Nevertheless, such a society in my juvenile estimation, during my short escapade from the middy's berth, had its charms, and I was rolling in with a tolerable swagger, when Mr Treenail pinched my arm.

"Mr Cringle, come here, into my room.

From the way in which he spoke, I imagined, in my innocence, that his room was at my elbow; but no such thing-we had to ascend a long, and not over-clean staircase, to the fourth floor, before we were shown into a miserable little double-bedded room. So soon as we had entered, the lieutenant shut the door.

"Tom," said he, "I have taken a fancy to you, and therefore I applied for leave to bring you with me; but I must expose you to some danger, and, I will allow, not altogether in a very creditable way either. You must enact the spy for a short space.

I did not like the notion certainly, but I had little time for consideration. "Here, he continued-" here is a bundle. He threw it on the floor. "You must rig in the clothes it contains, and make your way into the celebrated crimp shop in the neighbourhood, and pick up all the information you can regarding the haunts of the pressable men at Cove, especially with regard to the ten seamen who have run from the West Indiaman we left below. You know the admiral has forbidden pressing in Cork, so you must contrive to frighten the blue jackets down to Cove, by representing yourself as an apprentice of one of the merchant vessels, who had run from his indentures, and that you had narrowly escaped from a press-gang this very night here."

I made no scruples, but forthwith arrayed myself in the slops contained in the bundle; in a pair of shag trowsers, red flannel shirt, coarse blue cloth jacket, and no waistcoat.

"Now," said Mr Treenail, “stick a quid of tobacco in your cheek, and take the cockade out of your hat; or stop, leave it, and ship this striped woollen night-cap-so-and come along with me." We left the house, and walked half a mile down the quay.

Presently we arrived before a kind of low grog-shop-a bright lamp was flaring in the breeze at the door, one of the panes of the glass of it being broken.

Before I entered, Mr Treenail took me to one side-" Tom, Tom Cringle, you must go into this crimp shop; pass yourself off for an apprentice of the Guava, bound for Trinidad, the ship that arrived just as we started, and pick up all the knowledge you can regarding the whereabouts of the men, for we are, as you know, cruelly ill manned, and must replenish as we best may." I entered the house, after having agreed to rejoin my superior officer, so soon as I considered I had obtained my object. I rapped at the inner door, in which there was a small unglazed aperture cut, about four inches square; and I now, for the first time, perceived that a strong glare of light was cast into the lobby, where I stood, by a large argand with a brilliant reflector, that, like a magazine lantern, had been mortised into the bulkhead, at a height of about two feet above the door in which the spy-hole was cut. My first signal was not attended to; I rapped again, and looking round I noticed Mr Treenail flitting backwards and forwards across the doorway, in the rain, with his pale face and his sharp nose, with the sparkling drop at the end on't, glancing in the light of the lamp. I heard a step within, and a very pretty face now appeared at the wicket.

"Who are you saking here, an' please ye?"

No one in particular, my dear; but if you don't let me in, shall be lodged in jail before five minutes be over."

"I can't help that, young man," said she; from, darling?"

"but where are ye

Hush!—I am run from the Guava, now lying at the Cove." "Oh," said my beauty, "come in ;" and she opened the door, but still kept it on the chain in such a way, that although, by bobbing, I creeped and slid in beneath it, yet a common-sized man could not possibly have squeezed himself through. The instant I entered, the door was once more banged to, and the next moment I was ushered into the kitchen, a room about fourteen feet square, with a well-sanded floor, a huge dresser on one side, and over against it a respectable show of pewter dishes in ranks against the wall. There was a long stripe of a deal table in the middle of the room-but no tablecloth-at the bottom of which sat a large, bloated, brandy, or rather whisky-faced savage, dressed in a shabby great-coat of the hodden grey worn by the Irish peasantry, dirty swan-down vest, and greasy corduroy breeches, worsted stockings, and well-patched shoes; he was smoking a long pipe. Around the table sat about a dozen seamen, from whose wet jackets and trowsers the heat of the blazing fire, that roared up the chimney, sent up a smoky steam that cast a halo round the lamp, that depended from the roof, and hung down within two feet of the table, stinking abominably of coarse whale oil. They were, generally speaking, hardy, weather-beaten men, and the greater proportion half, or more than half drunk. When I entered, I walked up to the landlord.

"Yo ho, my young un, whence and whither bound, my hearty?” "The first don't signify much to you," said I, "seeing I have wherewithal in the locker to pay my shot; and as to the second, of that hereafter; so, old boy, let's have some grog, and then say if you can ship me with one of them colliers that are lying alongside the quay ?

"My eye, what a lot of brass that small chap has!" grumbled mine host. "Why, my lad, we shall see to-morrow morning; but you gammons so bad about the rhino, that we must prove you a bit; so, Kate, my dear,”—to the pretty girl who had let me in— score a pint of rum against- -Why, what is your name?" "What's that to you?" rejoined I; "let's have the drink, and don't doubt but the shiners shall be forthcoming.

“Hurrah!" shouted the party, most of them now very tipsy...

So the rum was produced forthwith, and as I lighted a pipe and filled a glass of swizzle, I struck in, "Messmates, I hope you have all shipped?"

'No, we han't," said some of them.

"Nor shall we be in any hurry, boy," said others.

"Do as you please, but I shall, as soon as I can, I know; and I recommend all of you making yourselves scarce to-night, and keeping a bright look-out."

Why, boy, why?"

"Simply because I have just escaped a press-gang, by bracing sharp up at the corner of the street, and shoving into this dark alley here."

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 do you go to, my

Why, if I can't get shipped to-night, I shall trundle 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 tomorrow."

"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, by the piper!"

'Have with you, boy-have with you," 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.

I paid the reckoning, urging the party to proceed all the while, and indicating Pat Doolan's at the Cove as a good rendezvous; and

promising to overtake them before they reached Passage, I parted company at the corner of the street, and rejoined the lieutenant.

Next morning we spent in looking about the town-Cork is a fine town-contains seventy thousand inhabitants, more or less— safe in that--and three hundred thousand pigs, driven by herdsmen, with coarse grey great-coats. The pigs are not so handsome as those in England, where the legs are short, and tails curly; here the legs are long, the flanks sharp and thin, and tails long and straight.

All classes speak with a deuced brogue, and worship graven images; arrived at Cove to a late dinner-and here follows a great deal of nonsense of the same kind.

By the time it was half-past ten o'clock, I was preparing to turn in, when the master at arms called down to me,

"Mr Cringle, you are wanted in the gunroom."

I put on my jacket again, and immediately proceeded thither, and on my way I noticed a group of seamen, standing on the starboard gangway, dressed in pea jackets, under which, by the light of a lantern, carried by one of them, I could see they were all armed with pistol and cutlass. They appeared in great glee, and as they made way for me, I could hear one fellow whisper, "There goes the little beagle." When I entered the gunroom, the first lieutenant, master, and purser, were sitting smoking and enjoying themselves over a glass of cold grog-the gunner taking the watch on deck—the doctor was piping any thing but mellifluously, on the double flageolet, while the Spanish priest, and aide-de-camp to the general, were playing at chess, and wrangling in bad French. I could hear Mr Treenail rumbling and stumbling in his stateroom as he accoutred himself in a jacket similar to those of the armed boat's crew whom I had passed, and presently he stepped into the gunroom, armed also with cutlass and pistol.

'Mr Cringle, get ready to go in the boat with me, and bring your arms with you."

I now knew whereabouts he was, and that my Cork friends were the quarry at which we aimed. I did as I was ordered, and we immediately pulled on shore, where, leaving two strong fellows in charge of the boat, with instructions to fire their pistols and shove off a couple of boat-lengths, should any suspicious circumstance indicating an attack take place, we separated, like a pulk of Cossacks coming to the charge, but without the hourah, with orders to meet before Pat Doolan's door, as speedily as our legs could carry us. We had landed about a cable's length to the right of the high pre

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Tom Cringle's Log, Volumul 1