You may guess if I was pleased, not only for him, but for
myself also, when I heard that the sick man was better and had gone
on deck.
The morning was raw and foggy, though the sun suffused the fog with
pink and amber; the fog-horn still blew, stertorous and
intermittent; and to add to the discomfort, the seamen were just
beginning to wash down the decks. But for a sick man this was
heaven compared to the steerage. I found him standing on the hot-
water pipe, just forward of the saloon deck house. He was smaller
than I had fancied, and plain-looking; but his face was
distinguished by strange and fascinating eyes, limpid grey from a
distance, but, when looked into, full of changing colours and
grains of gold. His manners were mild and uncompromisingly plain;
and I soon saw that, when once started, he delighted to talk. His
accent and language had been formed in the most natural way, since
he was born in Ireland, had lived a quarter of a century on the
banks of Tyne, and was married to a Scots wife. A fisherman in the
season, he had fished the east coast from Fisherrow to Whitby.
When the season was over, and the great boats, which required extra
hands, were once drawn up on shore till the next spring, he worked
as a labourer about chemical furnaces, or along the wharves
unloading vessels. In this comparatively humble way of life he had
gathered a competence, and could speak of his comfortable house,
his hayfield, and his garden.
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