stians on shore will be after putting us to work at the
sugar-canes, and be swearing we've just come straight across from
Africa. As to our tongues, there'll be no safety for us through them,
and they'll swear we've made off with the uniforms from some ship of war
or other, and perhaps be tricing us up as thieves and murderers. Did
you ever hear tell of the Irishman--a sweet countryman of mine,--who
once came out from the Emerald Isle to these parts--to Demerara, I
believe? As soon as the ship which brought him entered the harbour, she
was boarded by a boat full of niggers.

"`Will yer honour have your duds carried ashore now?' asks one, stepping
up to him. `It's myself will see ye all comfortable in a jiffy, if
ye'll trust me, at Mother Flannigan's.'

"My countryman looked at him very hard.

"`What's your name now?' he asks with some trepidation.

"`Pat O'Dwyer, yer honour,' says the nigger.

"`Pat, how long have ye been here?' asks my countryman, solemnly.

"`Faith, about two years, yer honour,' says the nigger.

"`Two years, did ye say--two years only to turn a white Irishman into a
nigger?' exclaimed my countryman with no little alarm. `Then faith the
sooner I get away back from out of this black-burning country the
better--or my own mither down in Ballyshannon won't be after knowing her
own beautiful boy again at all, and my father would be after disowning
me, and my sisters and brothers to boot, and Father O'Roony would be
declaring that it was a white Christian he made of me, and that I
couldn't be the same anyhow. Take my duds on shore. No. Take 'em
below, and I'll go there too, and remain there too till the ship sails
and I'm out of this nigger-making land.' My countryman kept to his
intention, and from that day till the ship sailed, never set foot on
shore. You'll understand that no small number of Irishmen go out to
that country, and that the nigger boy had learnt his English from them--
for he wasn't a real Irishman after all, but that my countryman did not
find out till he got back to auld Ireland again.

"Och, they are broths of boys the Paddies, but they do make curious
mistakes somehow or other, it must be allowed.

"I was one day dining at the mess of some soldier officers, when one of
them, a Captain O'Rourke, positively declared on his faith as a
gentleman that `he had seen anchovies growing on the walls at
Gibraltar.'

"Most of the party opened their eyes, but said nothing, for O