"Hush--I am run from the _Guava_, now lying at the Cove."

"Oh," said my beauty, "come in"; and she opened the door, but still
kept it on the chain in such a way, that although, by bobbing, I
creeped and slid in beneath it, yet a common-sized man could not
possibly have squeezed himself through. The instant I entered, the
door was once more banged to, and the next moment I was ushered into
the kitchen, a room about fourteen feet square, with a well-sanded
floor, a huge dresser on one side, and over against it a respectable
show of pewter dishes in racks against the wall. There was a long
stripe of a deal table in the middle of the room--but no tablecloth--at
the bottom of which sat a large, bloated, brandy, or rather whisky
faced savage, dressed in a shabby greatcoat of the hodden grey worn by
the Irish peasantry, dirty swandown vest, and greasy corduroy breeches,
worsted stockings, and well-patched shoes; he was smoking a long pipe.
Around the table sat about a dozen seamen, from whose wet jackets and
trousers the heat of the blazing fire, that roared up the chimney, sent
up a smoky steam that cast a halo round a lamp which depended from the
roof, and hung down within two feet of the table, stinking abominably
of coarse whale oil. They were, generally speaking, hardy,
weather-beaten men, and the greater proportion half, or more than half,
drunk. When I entered, I walked up to the landlord.

"Yo ho, my young un! whence and whither bound, my hearty?"

"The first don't signify much to you," said I, "seeing I have
wherewithal in my locker to pay my shot; and as to the second, of that
hereafter; so, old boy, let's have some grog, and then say if you can
ship me with one of them colliers that are lying alongside the quay?"