kward shock from the sea, and
another protest from the funnel, and a fellow-creature at the paddle-box
more audibly indisposed than I think he need be--"Her sparkling gems, or
snow-white wand, But O her beauty was fa-a-a-a-a-r beyond"--another
awkward one here, and the fellow creature with the umbrella down and
picked up--"Her spa-a-arkling ge-ems, or her Port! port! steady! steady!
snow-white fellow-creature at the paddle-box very selfishly audible,
bump roar wash white wand."

As my execution of the Irish melodies partakes of my imperfect
perceptions of what is going on around me, so what is going on around me
becomes something else than what it is. The stokers open the
furnace-doors below, to feed the fires, and I am again on the box of the
old Exeter Telegraph fast coach, and that is the light of the
for-ever-extinguished coach-lamps, and the gleam on the hatches and
paddle-boxes is _their_ gleam on cottages and haystacks, and the
monotonous noise of the engines is the steady jingle of the splendid
team. Anon, the intermittent funnel-roar of protest at every violent
roll becomes the regular blast of the high-pressure engine, and I
recognise the exceedingly explosive steamer in which I ascended the
Mississippi when the American Civil War was not, and when only its
causes were. A fragment of mast on which the light of a lantern falls,
an end of rope, and a jerking block or so become suggestive of
Franconi's Circus in Paris, where I shall be this very night mayhap (for
it must be morning now), and they dance to the selfsame time and tune as
the trained steed, Black Raven. What may be the speciality of these
waves as they come rushing on I cannot desert the pressing demands made
upon me by the gems she wore, to inquire, but they are charged with
something about Robinson Crusoe, and I think it was in Yarmouth Roads
that he first went a-seafaring and near foundering (what a terrific
sound that word had for me when I was a boy!) in his first gale of wind.
Still, through all this, I must ask her (who _was_ she, I wonder!) for
the fiftieth time, and without ever stopping, Does she not fear to
stray, so lone and lovely through this bleak way, And are Erin's sons so
good or so cold, As not to be tempted by more fellow-creatures at the
paddle-box or gold? Sir Knight, I feel not the least alarm, No son of
Erin will offer me harm, For though they love fellow creatures with
umbrella down again and golden store, Sir Knight, they--w