YANK--[Half good-natured again--contemptuously.] Aw, take it easy.
Leave him alone. He ain't woith a punch. Drink up. Here's how,
whoever owns dis. [He takes a long swallow from his bottle. All
drink with him. In a flash all is hilarious amiability again,
back-slapping, loud talk, etc.]

PADDY--[Who has been sitting in a blinking, melancholy daze--
suddenly cries out in a voice full of old sorrow.] We belong to
this, you're saying? We make the ship to go, you're saying? Yerra
then, that Almighty God have pity on us! [His voice runs into the
wail of a keen, he rocks back and forth on his bench. The men
stare at him, startled and impressed in spite of themselves.] Oh,
to be back in the fine days of my youth, ochone! Oh, there was
fine beautiful ships them days--clippers wid tall masts touching
the sky--fine strong men in them--men that was sons of the sea as
if 'twas the mother that bore them. Oh, the clean skins of them,
and the clear eyes, the straight backs and full chests of them!
Brave men they was, and bold men surely! We'd be sailing out,
bound down round the Horn maybe. We'd be making sail in the dawn,
with a fair breeze, singing a chanty song wid no care to it. And
astern the land would be sinking low and dying out, but we'd give
it no heed but a laugh, and never a look behind. For the day that
was, was enough, for we was free men--and I'm thinking 'tis only
slaves do be giving heed to the day that's gone or the day to come
--until they're old like me. [With a sort of religious
exaltation.] Oh, to be scudding south again wid the power of the
Trade Wind driving her on steady through the nights and the days!
Full sail on her! Nights and days! Nights when the foam of the
wake would be flaming wid fire, when the sky'd be blazing and