His Manners Were Mild And Uncompromisingly Plain;
And I Soon Saw That, When Once Started, He Delighted To Talk.
His
accent and language had been formed in the most natural way, since
he was born in Ireland, had lived a quarter of a century on the
banks of Tyne, and was married to a Scots wife.
A fisherman in the
season, he had fished the east coast from Fisherrow to Whitby.
When the season was over, and the great boats, which required extra
hands, were once drawn up on shore till the next spring, he worked
as a labourer about chemical furnaces, or along the wharves
unloading vessels. In this comparatively humble way of life he had
gathered a competence, and could speak of his comfortable house,
his hayfield, and his garden. On this ship, where so many
accomplished artisans were fleeing from starvation, he was present
on a pleasure trip to visit a brother in New York.
Ere he started, he informed me, he had been warned against the
steerage and the steerage fare, and recommended to bring with him a
ham and tea and a spice loaf. But he laughed to scorn such
counsels. 'I'm not afraid,' he had told his adviser; 'I'll get on
for ten days. I've not been a fisherman for nothing.' For it is
no light matter, as he reminded me, to be in an open boat, perhaps
waist-deep with herrings, day breaking with a scowl, and for miles
on every hand lee-shores, unbroken, iron-bound, surf-beat, with
only here and there an anchorage where you dare not lie, or a
harbour impossible to enter with the wind that blows.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 53 of 262
Words from 13867 to 14147
of 70588
