Part 18

“Liberty, Lieutenant,” interrupted the Old Irish Boy, “is only comparative at the best; and none of us gets our fill of it. Going about from one place to another isn't freedom, as I think you'll own: so why need I cry out? If it was, nobody, as I said, while ago, has as much as he wishes of it. I'd be delighted to be able to go get mass once a week, and to crawl a quarter of a mile now and then; but my infirmities prevent me: so I don't have my wish. But I'm only like the rest o' the world; and, therefore, I ought to be contented; though, I'll own, I'm not so, exactly. One man sighs to have a jaunt into the country, sometimes,--but his wife won't let him leave the town he lives in; another thinks he'd be happy if he could p'rambulate about in foreign parts,--but his pocket keeps him at home; even that mighty conqueror, Alexander the Great, if there's truth in the song that's made about him, found the globe itself too little for his desires; and you know, well enough, that little Snookenhausen used to be telling us at Malta, of an ould philosopher, in ancient times, who fell out with his own bread and butter, like a big baby as he was, because he couldn't have another world for a play-ground, so as he might play trap-ball with this. There's none of us but strains the cable by which we're moored, as tight as we well can; and many's the man tries, all his life, to cut it, and sheer off into the main; but he can't. If you tie up a horse in a field, he'll not care half so much about the rich grass that's under his nose, as he will for a few dry blades, which his rope won't let him reach; and he'll be trying for them, when he might be filling his belly with better. If I am, as you say, shut up here like a pig in a coop,--and it's true enough,--I've the comfort of knowing, that be, who thinks himself free, and brags about his liberty, has a ring in his nose, and, may be, two or three other incumbrances, which prevent him, although he's adrift, from enjoying his freedom, or doing as he likes, much more than I can.--But now for my neighbours--”

THE NATIVE AND THE ODD FISH.

Mick Maguire is a native of these parts, and he's out and out the oddest fish among my neighbours, as I think, and as you'll think too, may be, by-and-by, when I tell you more about him.--Didn't it ever occur to you, that a man may be ruined by a bit of good luck as well as by bad?--I'm sure it must.--I had an uncle at Tralee, who was left seventy pounds by his wife's gossip; and he welcomed the gift so warmly, and caroused so heartily to the honour of the giver, that he never ceased drinking and losing his time,--though he was a dacent man, and did business as he ought before,--until the seventy pounds, and a little to the tail of it, had slipped through his fingers. But that wasn't the end of it: for he got such bad habits as he never could shake off again; so he lived a few years a sot, and died a beggar: all which wouldn't have happened but for the seventy pounds his wife's gossip gave him.--I knew a young woman, whose name I won't mention, for the sake of her family, who lost herself entirely through a love of fine clothes, which she had never cared more about, than just a little, as all women do,--and no blame to them,--before her brother, who sailed for three years in the same ship with me, brought her home a little bag of silks and things above her station, which, when she'd worn them, made her despise her plain, honest, ould duds: but them that was about her couldn't give her better; so she grew sick of home, and did that she was sore at heart for when she came to a death-bed.--Ah! then's the time, if we never did before, when we know right from wrong;--then's the time, when the brain balances things and gives true weight to all our misdeeds;--then's the time, when a man, who could never before recollect what he did that day se'nnight, remembers all the evil he has done in his days, and all the good he might have done, but wouldn't. A dying man's memory, if he has been a bad one, is one of the most perfect and terrible things in the world;--go see one yourself, and you'll own it. We may be'cute enough to hide what we do from the world all our lives, but we can't do so from ourselves when death puts out his big bony paw to give us a grim welcome to his dark dominions. We may be'cute enough to shut our own eyes to what we've done, when we're strong and able, and the world's going merrily round with us; and we may be fools enough to think that our sins are blotted out when we have forgotten them;--for I've found that men are just like the ostriches I've seen myself, in Africa, which, when they're hunted, poke their pates into a dark place, leaving their bodies entirely exposed, and fancy no one can see them if they can't see themselves:--but when we know that the last sands in our glass are running, and the dead sea is glimmering before us, we can't poke our heads into a corner,--don't you see?--or tie a stone to the neck of each of our iniquities, and drown it;--or look another way, and think of to-morrow's dinner, when they're coming to meet us;--or silence their small but very terrible voices, by whistling the burthen of an old song: for,--do you mark?--they won't be served so: they will be seen; they will speak; and, faith! it's bear them we must, whether we will or no. We may have fancied them dead and gone, years ago; but their ghosts start up and surround our death-beds, and clamour so, that we can't but listen to them: and what's most awful, they make a man his own judge; and no earthly judge is so impartial as a man is of himself, when his people are just wishing him good-b'ye for ever. For when we get on the brink of life and death, and know that it's ten to one we'll be dead by the morning, and it's just midnight already;--when we think that in a few hours our ears will be deaf, and our eyes blind, and we can't wag a finger, and our cold white corpse will be stretched out on a board,--motionless, helpless, good for nothing, and lumber more than anything else;--when we know, that, much as we thought of ourselves, the sun will rise, and the birds sing, and the flowers look beautiful, and the ox be yoked to the plough, and the chimneys smoke, and the pot be boiled, and the world go on without us, as well as if we'd never been in it;--then's the time, I say, we get our vanity cut up by the roots, and feel what atoms we've been in it:--and then's the time too, that the soul,--just before pluming her wings, and having half shaken off the dross of humanity,--becomes strong as the body gets weak, and won't be bamboozled, but calls up all our sins past, and places them stedfastly before our eyes; and if we've done wrong--that is, much of it,--a big black bird stretches out her great wings and flutters, brooding like a weight of cold lead, on our hearts; and conscience, though we've contrived to keep her down all our lives, then starts up, taking advantage of our helplessness, and reigns in fall power.--But what's all this to Mick Maguire? you'll say.--Faith! then, not much: I began with an idea of getting to him in a few words, but was led astray, by noticing the death of the young woman I mentioned as being ruined by the gift of a brother, who meant it for her good. And you'll think it odd, may be, that the likes o' me casts over things so sariously: but I do, and there's nothing plazes me more than so doing, when I'm left alone here by myself, for hours and hours together, while all that's near and dear to me is out upon the waves, the mighty roar of which, as they break upon the rocks about me, I hear night and day; and the sound o' them, and solitude, begets sarious thoughts; and so they should, in one that's gone sixty. There's never a day but I think o' death, so that I'm sure I'll be able to meet him firmly when he knocks at the gates of life for me, and bids me come. If I could go about, I'd not have such oceans of odd, out o' the way thoughts, consarning various things; but here I am, fettered by my infirmities to an ould chair, and I've nothing to do half my time, but think. Don't imagine, though, that I'm laid up in a harbour of peace, or that the other half of my time is calm and pleasant: it's no such thing; the woes and the wickedness of the world--good luck to it though, for all that--reaches me here in this corner, though it's harm me they can't much. I'm like an ould buoy, fast moored to an anchor on a bad coast, over which the waves dashes and splashes all day long, but they can neither move it nor damage it. But what's all this to Mick Maguire? you'll say, again. Faith! then, little or nothing: but now I've done, and we'll get on.

Mick, like my uncle at Tralee, has been ruined by a gift. He was once a hard-working man, and did well; until young Pierce Veogh, just after he came into possession of the house that's called “The Beg,” on the hill yonder,--which he did at his father's death,--gave Mick an ould gun once, for something I forget; and that gun has been the ruin of him. He works one day in the week to buy powder and shot; and half starves himself, and goes in rags the other six, prowling about the rocks, and firing at sea-gulls and so forth, but seldom shooting one.

Mick's an oddity, as I tould you before; and why _so?_ you'll say. Why, then, not for his face, for he's good-looking; nor for his figure, for he's straight and well built; nor for his jokes, for he never makes one; nor for any one thing in the world but his always telling the plain naked truth; good or bad, no matter if it harms him, he don't mind, but always spakes the thing that is, and won't tell even a white lie for himself, much more for any one else:--and if that's not an oddity, I don't know what is. There's so much lying going on in the world, that if a man just lives in a corner, and sees only three people in the year, he must lie now and then; or, somehow, things won't be as they should be; he won't do like them that's about him, and can't get on: why, I don't know; but so it is. Mick was never known to tell a story in his whole life; but he has sworn to so many out o' the way things, that he's often been suspected to be a big liar: for I need scarce say to you, that nothing can look more like a lie sometimes than the plain truth. But whatever Mick says, always at last and in the long run turns out to be fact: so that we don't know what to think of the story he has of the fairy he saw on the rocks long ago. It seems as much like a lie as anything ever I heard; but if it is one, it's the first Mick tould; and if so, troth then, it's a thumper. And why shouldn't it?--A good man, when he does wrong, commits a big sin; while you and I only does dozens of little ones: and them that sticks by the truth in general, if they happens to tell a lie, faith! then, it's a wonderful big one;--and, may be, so is Mick's story;--but you'll judge for yourself, when you hear it. But don't forget the honesty of Mick's tongue; and bear in mind too, that we shouldn't disbelieve anything simply because it's out of the way to us, and we never saw the likes of it ourselves; for there's so many strange things in the world, that one don't know what to disbelieve; and of all the wonderful things I ever heard of, there's none seems to me so very wonderful as this, namely:--I exist, and I know it. Now for Mick's story:--

“One day,” says he, “as I was out shooting on the black rocks, I clambered up to a place where I never was before; and I don't think man had set foot upon it till then: it was higher than you'd think, looking up from the sea, which washed the foot of it; for the great crag itself, which none of us can climb,--I mane that one where the eagle's nist is,--seemed to be below it. Well, thinks I, when I got to the top, I'll have a good pelt at the birds from this, I'm sure: but no, I couldn't; for though they were flying round and round it, divil a one would come within gun-shot, but kipt going about, and going about, until the head o' me wint round wid looking at them, and I began to feel sick, for I'd come out before breakfast, not intinding to stay long; but somehow, I wint further and further, and, at last, the sun was going down, and me there, where I tould you I was, a-top of the big crag. 'Michael,' says I to meeself, 'it's time for you to be going too, for the birds won't come near you; and you're hungry, boy,--so you are, Mick; you can't deny that.' And it's true thin I couldn't; for I never was hungrier in my life, than I was that time, and sorrow the thing in my pocket softer than a flint. Well, thin I began to go down; but before I'd got twinty steps, what do you think I saw there, upon the bare rock, where nobody seemed to have been before me, near upon half a day's journey higher than the sea,--what, I say, do you think I saw, lying before me there You wouldn't guess in a year. Why thin it was an oysther!--I started, as though a ghost had come across me:--and why wouldn't I?--for I'd no right to expect to see such a thing as an oysther there, you know, had I?--Thinks I, after awhile, 'Here's a fine mouthful for you, Mick, if it's only fresh; but, may be, it's been here these thousand years.--Eh, thin, Mick! but you're lucky, so you are, if it should be ateable.'

“Sitting down on the rock, I put out my hand to get a hould of it, whin what does it do, but lifts up its shell of its ownself!--and there was something inside it, just like an oysther, you'd think; but whin you looked closer, what was it thin, but a small dwarf of a man, wid a beard, and a little broad belly, and two short, fat, little darlings of legs, and his both hands in his breeches pockets; quite at home, and as aisy as you or I'd be in our arm chair, if we had one.

“'I'm glad to see you, Mick,' says he; 'it's long I've been expecting you.'

“Now, there's many that would have run away, and broke their necks down the rock, at hearing the crature call them by their names, and say this; but I'm one that never feared Banshee Lepreghaun, or any one of the little people, good, bad, or indifferent;--why should I?--So I pulled off my hat, and making a leg to him,--'Sir,' says I, 'if I'd known as much, I'd have come before.'

“'Thank you kindly, Mick Maguire,' says he. 'No thanks to me thin, at all at all,' thinks I, 'if you knew what I know:' for I was determined to devour him, if he was ateable. 'And it's by my own name you call me, sir,' says I, 'is it?'

“'To be sure it is,' says he; you wouldn't have me call you out of your name,--would you?'--And thin he fell laughing, as though his little face would have tumbled to pieces: and, faith! of all the faces I ever set eyes on, I never saw the likes of his for a roguish look.--'You wouldn't have me call you out of your name, would you, Mick?' says he again.

“'Why, thin, no I wouldn't, and that's truth,' says I; 'but what's your own name? I'd like to know, so I would,' says L “'I dare say you would,' says he.

“'And after that,' says I, 'I'd be glad if you'd tell me a small trifle about yourself, and how you live in your little house there, whin you shut down the roof of it; and thin--'

“'Bad manners to you Mick,' says he; 'don't be prying into a person's domestic arrangements.'--Them were his words. 'Mind your own business,' says he; 'and ax me no questions about mee-self; for, may be, I won't answer them.'

“'But, sir,' says I, thinking to get all I could out of him, before I ate him; 'sir,' says I, 'it isn't every day one sees, betuxt a pair of oysther-shells--'

“'Oh! Mick!' says he, 'there's more out o' the way things than meeself, in the sea.'

“'I shouldn't wonder, sir,' says I.

“'There is, Mick,' says he; 'take my word for it.'

“'I'm sure of it, sir,' says I; 'and yet people says there's no mermaids even: now meeself saw one once, and she'd a fish's tail, and big fins below; and above she was as like a man, as one brogue is like another. Now, sir, I'd like to know your opinion.'

“'Mick,' says he; 'was it in the bay yourself saw the mermaid?'

“'Faith! and it was,' says I.

“'Just four years ago,' says he, 'Mick?'

“'Just,' says I; 'come St. Breedien's day; for it was the very week Jimmy Gorman was drowned, so it was: his wife married Tim Carroll, tin months after his wake,--for we waked Jimmy, though he wasn't at home, and drank long life to our absent friend, in the pitcher o' pothien he left in the cupboard,--so we did:--and she has now three children, by Tim; and Maurien, the little one, is two months ould, barring a week, or thereaway; and three nines is twinty-siven, and tin is tin more,--that's thirty-siven, and three months betuxt and betune each o' the children, makes nine more, that's forty-six: thin there's Maurien, she's two months ould, as I said; so that, taking them together, there's forty-eight months, one up or one down, and that many months is four years:--so that, by the rules of multiplication and population, Jimmy's dead four years--don't you see?'

“'Arrah! don't be preaching,' says he; 'sure, meeself knew Jimmy well.'

“'Ah! and is it yourself?' says I; 'and was he on visiting terms wid ye?'

“'I knew him better than ever you did in your life, Mick,' says he.

“'Not a bit of it,' says I; 'did you ever spend your money wid him, like meeself, at the sheebeen-house?--or at the pattarn there above, with the penny-whiff woman? Did you ever once trate him to a glass o' whiskey, sir?' says I;--'not yourself, in starch.'

“'Mick,' says he, 'Jimmy and I lay in one bed for seven months.'

“'In one bed!'

“'Yes.'

“'In a bed of oysthers, may be!'

“'It was,' says he.

“'Oh! thin, well and good, sir,' says I; 'but what has Jimmy to do with the mermaid?'

“'Mick,' says he, 'the mermaid yourself saw below in the bay was him.'

“'Is it Jim?--And now I recollect--what's as true as that my daddy Jack's a corpse,--the mermaid, sure enough, had a carrotty pole, and two whiskers, and a big jacket, to say nothing of the bradien, though they wouldn't believe me,--so they wouldn't; but betuxt ourselves, sir, by this pipe in my fist, she was dacently clothed as meeself, barring the breeches. Oh! thin, divil a saw saw I of breeches about her; and her legs,--sure, and wasn't her legs a fish? and didn't meeself say so?'

“'Very well, Mick,' says he; 'I'll explain it to you:--a big blackguard of a shark, that was on a travelling tour, happened to be going that way when Jim's boat was upset, and gobbled him up just as he got into the water: but, lo and behould! whin he'd got Jim's legs down his throat, and came to his bradien and big belly, divil a swallow could the shark swallow him:--and there Jim stuck so fast, that if the shark had taken fifty emetics before-hand, he couldn't have cast him up.--With that, Jim, finding his situation unpleasant, began to kick; and the shark, with that, tickled Jim's ribs with his teeth; but he couldn't bite clane through his big coat,--and the more Jim kicked, the more the shark tickled him; and up they wint, and down they wint; and my belief is, that Jim would have bate him, but the fish got suffocated, and sunk, just as Jim was gitting a pull at the whiskey-bottle, which he carried in his side pouch; and down they wint together, so sudden, that Jim, taken up as he was with the taste of the crature, didn't know he was drowned till they were both at the bottom.'

“'Was Jimmy and the shark, the mermaid meeself saw thin?' says I.

“'They was, Mick.'

“'Thin bad luck to the pair o' them,' says I, 'for two impostors!--And how did your honour know this?'

“'Wasn't I in the shark's belly all the time?' says he.--'Didn't he gobble me up with a salmon, that tried to take refuge in the place where meeself and a few friends laid tin days before?--A lobsther lived in Jim's pocket for a month; and he and all his family used to go out three days a week to pull Jim's nose, for fishing up two of their cousins once,--so they did.--I'd thank ye for a pinch of snuff.'

“'And welcome, sir,' says I, houlding over the snisheen; 'meeself likes to hear news of my friends, sir,' says I; 'would your honour plaze to take a shaugh o' the doothien too?' And politeness, you know, made me offer him the pipe.

“'Mick,' says he; 'is it meeself, or the likes o' me, that smokes?--I never took a goll o' the peepa in all my life:--and over and above that, Mick, I'd feel mightily obliged to you, if you'd blow your smoke higher, or be just ginteel and agreeable enough to sit the other side o' me: if you don't, you're a dirty blackguard, and bad luck to you, sir,' says he; 'for I've no chimney to my house.' With that, I just knocked out the backy from the pipe, and tould him, I didn't mind meeself, and I'd put away smoking at once.

“'Mick,' says he, 'you'd nothing but ashes in your doothien; so the divil's thanks to you!'

“'Sir,' says I, not noticing what he said,' that's a mighty nate little house you have of your own; I'd like to know who built it.' “'Faith! thin I did meeself, Mick,' says he; 'but I'd like your big finger the better, if it was outside my door.'

“'Sir,' says I, 'if I'd such a nate little cabin, I'd marry Molly Malony at once. Doesn't your honour ever think of getting a wife?--or, may be, you're a widower?'

“'Mick,' says he, 'oysthers don't marry.'

“'Ye live mighty like a hermit, in your cell there,' says I.

“'Mighty like,' says he.

“'I suppose, you have your beads too, and you count them,' says I.

“'I suppose I don't,' says he; 'for I've but one.'

“'Troth, and that's a thumper thin,' says I, peeping into his little parlour: and there, sure enough, was a pearl big enough to be the making of me, and all the seed and breed of me, past, present, and to come, hanging by a bit of sea-weed round his neck.

“'Do you know what, Mick?' says he; I'm sick o' the world, Mick; and I'm half inclined to give you lave to ate me.'

“'Sir,' says I, taking off my hat, 'I'm much obliged to you for nothing at all. It's meeself manes to ate your honour, with or without lave,--so I do.'

“'Is it yourself, Mick?'

“'Faith! and it is thin,--though I say it; for I'm hungry:--and, after that, I mane to take the big pearl, I see there about your neck.'

“'Mick, you're a reprobate!--Sure, you would'nt be so un-genteel, as to ate a gentleman against his own inclination, would you?'

“'Meeself would thin, and think it no sin, in case the gentleman was a plump little oysther, like your honour.'

“'Then, Mick, I wish you good evening!'

“'Oh, joy!' says I, seeing how he was going to shut himself in; 'it's of no use, sir, to do so:--I've a knife in my pocket, and it's not burglary in this country to break into the house of an oysther.'

“'Mick,' says he; 'an oysther's house is his castle.'

“'Castle I' says I; 'is it a castle?--two shells, with a little face in the middle o' them, a castle?--Thin what's my cabin below but a palace?'

“'A pig's palace, it is, Mick,' says he.

“'Musha! bad luck thin,' says 1, 'to every bit of you--'

“'Ah! Mick,' says he, interrupting me, 'if I was half your size, I'd bate you blue, so I would.--You're a dirty cur, and so was your father before you.'

“'Say that again,' says I; 'say my father was a cur, sir, again, and I'd be obliged to you:--just say it now, and see how soon I'll break every bone in your skin.'

“'Bone!' says he; 'sorrow the bit of bone is in me at all!' says he.--'Do you know anything of anatomy, Mick?'

“'An atomy!--that's a thing smaller than a mite, isn't it?'

“'Arrah! no, man: don't you know what nerves and muscles manes?'

“'Nerves meeself knows little about; but is it muscles? Och! thin, didn't I get a bag-full below on the beach, this day se'nnight? Tell me, sir, if you plaze,--is a muscle any relation to your honour?'