ced them to deposit their money with him for
safe-keeping. Then he got them drunk on his tried and true whisky, and
kept them so; then he collected ten dollars from each for a ticket to
Queenstown on the ship which would sail in a few days; and then he
audited an account for each, charging them with money advanced as they
asked for it. As he always trebled the amount that they asked for, and
as they were too drunk and befuddled to contest the word of so good and
kind a man, Murphy had a tidy sum due him when the allotments were
signed.

This happened in due time and form. Captain. Williams, knowing by
experience that no crew would sign with him if he showed himself,
remained away from the shipping-office and took his ship down to the
Horseshoe with the help of his two mates, cook, steward, and a tug,
leaving his articles in the care of Hennesey, and trusting to him to
sign the crew and bring them down in the tug that would tow him out
past the light-ship.

Hennesey did his part. As the _Albatross_ was bound for Liverpool _via_
Queenstown in ballast, there was only part deception in walking the
twenty-four to the shipping-office to sign their names (or marks) on
the ship's articles, which they cheerfully did, under the impression
that it was a necessary matter of form connected with their purchase of
tickets; and while the Shipping Commissioner marveled somewhat at the
hilarity and the ingenuous self-assertiveness of this crew of
sailormen, he forebore to express himself, and left the matter to
Captain Williams and Providence. So, with all their allotment or
advance signed away to Murphy against the entertainment they had
received, and with their pockets depleted from their sublime trust in
Murphy's bookkeeping, they went back to the boarding-house, the signed
slaves of Bucko Bill Williams, a man they had not met.

It was a wild night, that last night in the boarding-house. The Galways
and the Limericks got to fighting, and only Murphy's "pull" with the
police prevented a raid. Mrs. Murphy quit the scene early in the
evening, going back to her mother with unkind comments on the company
that Murphy kept, and Murphy, with a brick in his pocket, and sometimes
in his hand, was busy each minute in settling a dispute between this
man and that. At last he and Hennesey agreed that it was time to quiet
them; so Hennesey, behind the bar, filled twenty-four pint flasks, each
with a moderate addition of "knockout drops," and with