But this is all
nothing, except to prove satisfactorily that I am not worth a
skillagalee, and that is the reason which induces me to condescend to
serve his Majesty. Father M'Grath, the priest, who lived with my father,
taught me the elements, as they call them. I thought I had enough of the
elements then, but I've seen a deal more of them since. 'Terence,' says
my father to me one day, 'what do you mane to do?' 'To get my dinner,
sure,' replied I, for I was not a little hungry. 'And so you shall
to-day, my vourneen,' replied my father, 'but in future you must do
something to get your own dinner: there's not praties enow for the whole
of ye. Will you go to the _say_?' 'I'll just step down and look at it,'
says I, for we lived but sixteen Irish miles from the coast; so when I
had finished my meal, which did not take long, for want of ammunition, I
trotted down to the Cove to see what a ship might be like, and I
happened upon a large one sure enough, for there lay a three-decker with
an admiral's flag at the fore. 'May be you'll be so civil as to tell me
what ship that is,' said I to a sailor on the pier. 'It's the Queen
Charlotte,' replied he, 'of one hundred and twenty guns.' Now when I
looked at her size, and compared her with all the little smacks and hoys
lying about her, I very naturally asked how old she was; he replied,
that she was no more than three years old. 'But three years old!'
thought I to myself, 'it's a fine vessel you'll be when you'll come of
age, if you grow at that rate: you'll be as tall as the top of
Bencrow,'(that's a mountain we have in our parts).
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