`Be jabers,' sez I to mesilf, `I'm forgettin' that pace of Manilla
hawser I've got stowed away; sure an' it'll make an illigant overall!'

"No sooner I thinks that, than down I goes to the forepeak, where I
found me rope all right; and thin, thin and there, boys, I unreaves the
strands, making it all into spun yarn--you know, I s'pose, as how I'm a
sail-maker by rights, like Sails here, and not a reg'ler cook?"

"The deuce you are!" ejaculated Sails; "you never told us that before."

"No fear," replied Pat. "Faix, I don't till you iverythin' I knows--I
larnt better nor that from the monkeys in Brazil, old ship!"

"But what did you do with the Manilla hemp arter you unrove the hawser?"
asked Jorrocks, his curiosity now roused by the matter-of-fact way in
which the Irishman told his story--relating it as if every word was "the
true truth," according to the French idiom.

"Why, you omahdaun, I jist worked it into a guernsey, knitting it from
the nick downwards, the same as the ladies, bless 'em! do them woollen
fallals that they wear round theirselves."

"You wove it into a guernsey?" cried Sails, in astonishment.

"Aye, I did that so," returned Pat; "and wore it, too, all round Cape
Horn!"

"Then let me look at you a little closer," cried the sail-maker, pulling
Doolan towards him, and passing his hand over his nose.

"What the blazes are ye afther, man?" asked Pat, not being able to make
out what the other meant by handling him in that fashion.

"Only seeing if you had my mark," said Sails, calmly; "and here it is,
by all that's powerful!"

"Your mark, Sails? What on airth d'ye mane?"

"Why, whenever I sews up a chap in his hammock as dies at sea, which
I've often had to do as part of the sail-maker's duty in the many ships
I've been in, I allers makes a p'int of sticking my needle through the
corpse's nose, to prevent him slipping out of his covering."

"What!" ejaculated the Irishman, startled for the moment out of his
native keenness of wit; "an' is it m'aning to say as it's a could corpus
I've been, an' that I've bin did an' buried in the bottom of the say?"

"Aye, aye, my hearty," answered Sails, with great nonchalance. "And
I've sewed you up in your hammock, too, for sarten--that is, just as
sure as you fetched across that there streaky mule of yourn, arter
sailing over the ocean for three weeks, and made a guernsey frock out of
a Manilla hawser!"

There was a regular shout of laughter from all h