rds
us, and were filled full of love for our kind of both genders--for
the human race at large--and with an almost irresistible longing to go
aboard, and stay at all hazards, and sail along with our mate. We
had just time "to slip ashore and have another" when the gangway was
withdrawn and the steamer began to cast off. Then a rush down the wharf,
a hurried and confused shaking of hands, and our mate was snatched
aboard. The boat had been delayed, and we had waited for three hours,
and had seen our chum nearly every day for years, and now we found we
hadn't begun to say half what we wanted to say to him. We gripped his
hand in turn over the rail, as the green tide came between, till there
was a danger of one mate being pulled aboard--which he wouldn't have
minded much--or the other mate pulled ashore, or one or both yanked
overboard. We cheered the captain and cheered the crew and the
passengers--there was a big crowd of them going and a bigger crowd of
enthusiastic friends on the wharf--and our mate on the forward hatch; we
cheered the land they were going to and the land they had left behind,
and sang "Auld Lang Syne" and "He's a Jolly Good Fellow" (and so yelled
all of us) and "Home Rule for Ireland Evermore"--which was, I don't
know why, an old song of ours. And we shouted parting injunctions and
exchanged old war cries, the meanings of which were only known to us,
and we were guilty of such riotous conduct that, it being now Sunday
morning, one or two of the quieter members suggested we had better drop
down to about half-a-gale, as there was a severe-looking old sergeant
of police with an eye on us; but once, in the middle of a heart-stirring
chorus of "Auld Lang Sync," Jack, my especial chum, paused for breath
and said to me:

"It's all right, Joe, the trap's joining in."

And so he was--and leading.

But I well remember the hush that fell on that, and several other
occasions, when the steamer had passed the point.

And so our first mate sailed away out under the rising moon and under
the morning stars. He is settled down in Maoriland now, in a house of
his own, and has a family and a farm; but somehow, in the bottom of our
hearts, we don't like to think of things like this, for they don't fit
in at all with "Auld Lang Syne."'

There were six or seven of us on the wharf to see our next mate go. His
ultimate destination was known to himself and us only. We had pickets at
the shore end of the wharf, and we kep