ularly redolent sea on the wall, staring quite obliviously at
it and it at him, dreaming of fresh woods and pastures new as someone
somewhere sings. And it left him wondering why. Possibly he had tried to
find out the secret for himself, floundering up and down the antipodes
and all that sort of thing and over and under, well, not exactly under,
tempting the fates. And the odds were twenty to nil there was really no
secret about it at all. Nevertheless, without going into the _minutiae_
of the business, the eloquent fact remained that the sea was there in
all its glory and in the natural course of things somebody or other had
to sail on it and fly in the face of providence though it merely went
to show how people usually contrived to load that sort of onus on to the
other fellow like the hell idea and the lottery and insurance which were
run on identically the same lines so that for that very reason if no
other lifeboat Sunday was a highly laudable institution to which the
public at large, no matter where living inland or seaside, as the case
might be, having it brought home to them like that should extend its
gratitude also to the harbourmasters and coastguard service who had
to man the rigging and push off and out amid the elements whatever the
season when duty called _Ireland expects that every man_ and so on and
sometimes had a terrible time of it in the wintertime not forgetting the
Irish lights, Kish and others, liable to capsize at any moment, rounding
which he once with his daughter had experienced some remarkably choppy,
not to say stormy, weather.

--There was a fellow sailed with me in the Rover, the old seadog,
himself a rover, proceeded, went ashore and took up a soft job as
gentleman's valet at six quid a month. Them are his trousers I've on
me and he gave me an oilskin and that jackknife. I'm game for that job,
shaving and brushup. I hate roaming about. There's my son now, Danny,
run off to sea and his mother got him took in a draper's in Cork where
he could be drawing easy money.

--What age is he? queried one hearer who, by the way, seen from the
side, bore a distant resemblance to Henry Campbell, the townclerk, away
from the carking cares of office, unwashed of course and in a seedy
getup and a strong suspicion of nosepaint about the nasal appendage.

--Why, the sailor answered with a slow puzzled utterance, my son, Danny?
He'd be about eighteen now, way I figure it.

The Skibbereen father hereupon