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You see, I'm a bit down-'earted about the thoughts o' this 'ere black business, an' feel the want of a cheerin' word now and agin to keep up my droopin' spirits, d'ye see; so don't stand grinnin' there like a Cheshire cat, else I'll " The Bloater terminated the sentence in action, by squeezing Little Jim's cap over his eyes.
John Bull has now become the great variety artist, one in truth whose infinite variety detention cannot stale any more than Customs officers can arrest the artist's baggage. At one moment the "Shirt King," being prosecuted for the sale of cheap cottons as "Irish Linen" in London; the next he lands the "Bloater King" in New York, offering small fish as something very like a whale.
Straight on! hooray!" he shouted, leading off the crowd in the direction of the river. The crowd followed. The Bloater led them into a maze of intricate back streets; shot far ahead of them, and then, doubling, like a hare, into a retired corner, stood chuckling there while the shouting crowd swept by.
The idea of their rejecting flies served up as mine were was too preposterous. "Well," said he, "ye may be right, sorr: there may be none there at all; but I'll thry them wid a bait, anyhow." In another minute Mr. McGrath was slashing about right and left a bait which to my disordered vision looked as big as a Yarmouth bloater.
Everything was cold, dismal, dreary, disreputable; and here, in the dirtiest corner of the smallest possible yard, the Bloater found a half-concealed door that might have been the portal to a dog-kennel or pig-sty. Opening it he entered, and Little Jim followed. The aspect of things inside was not attractive.
"I wish 'e 'adn't bin took," said the Bloater with a look of regret on his expressive though dirty countenance. "Poor Martha!" said Little Jim, almost crying as he thought of her. "'Ow much d'you think 'e'll get, Bloater?" "Twenty years at least; p'r'aps go for life; you see it's an aggrawated case.
It is not a human thing, it is not a humane thing, when you see a poor woman staring hungrily at a bloater, to think, not of the obvious feelings of the woman, but of the unimaginable feelings of the deceased bloater.
As ever, "Dido, Queen of Carthage," and better things than that, are caviare to the general: what is new, and worse, to our most delicate epicures bloater paste is now caviare.
"I'm an archdeacon," muttered I, with one eye involuntarily closing. "You'll not let them double on you!" "Trust me, old boy," said I, endeavoring to look knowing. "I think you'll do," said he, "so now march. I'll wait for you here, and we'll go on board together; for old Bloater the skipper says he'll certainly weigh by daybreak."
Here, seated on the knee of Casey, his father's coxswain, he was being regaled with morsels of bloater, levered into his willing mouth on the point of a clasp knife, and washed down by copious draughts of strong tea out of a basin.
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