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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
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