Page:While the Billy Boils, 1913.djvu/365

 cargo aboard, and dragged our mate ashore for a final drink, and found that we had 'plenty of time to slip ashore for a parting wet' so often that his immediate relations grew anxious and officious, and the universe began to look good, and kind, and happy, and bully, and jolly, and grand, and glorious to us, and we forgave the world everything wherein it had not acted straight towards 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 We had just time 'to slip ashore and have another' when the gangway was withdrawn and the steamer began to cast off.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, but 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,