ney till they go out at last with
reeling steps and are lost in the sound. Without this background of
empty curaghs, and bodies floating naked with the tide, there would
be something almost absurd about the dissipation of this simple
place where men sit, evening after evening, drinking bad whisky and
porter, and talking with endless repetition of fishing, and kelp,
and of the sorrows of purgatory.

When we had finished our whiskey word came that the boat might
remain.

With some difficulty I got my bags out of the steamer and carried
them up through the crowd of women and donkeys that were still
struggling on the quay in an inconceivable medley of flour-bags and
cases of petroleum. When I reached the inn the old woman was in
great good humour, and I spent some time talking by the kitchen
fire. Then I groped my way back to the harbour, where, I was told,
the old net-mender, who came to see me on my first visit to the
islands, was spending the night as watchman.

It was quite dark on the pier, and a terrible gale was blowing.
There was no one in the little office where I expected to find him,
so I groped my way further on towards a figure I saw moving with a
lantern.

It was the old man, and he remembered me at once when I hailed him
and told him who I was. He spent some time arranging one of his
lanterns, and then he took me back to his office--a mere shed of
planks and corrugated iron, put up for the contractor of some work
which is in progress on the pier.

When we reached the light I saw that his head was rolled up in an
extraordinary collection of mufflers to keep him from the cold, and
that his face was much older than when I saw him before, though
still full of intelligence.

He began to tell how he had gone to see a relative of mine in Dublin
when he first left the island as a cabin-boy, between forty and
fifty years ago.

He told his story with the usual detail:--

We saw a man walking about on the quay in Dublin, and looking at us
without saying a word. Then he came down to the yacht. 'Are you the
men from Aran?' said he.

'We are,' said we.

'You're to come with me so,' said he. 'Why?' said we.

Then he told us it was Mr. Synge had sent him and we went with him.
Mr. Synge brought us into his kitchen and gave the men a glass of
whisky all round, and a half-glass to me because I was a boy--though
at that time and to this day I can drink as much as two men and not
be the worse of it. We were some