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Larrikins, unnatural husbands and fathers, brutes and torturers, cattle maimers and stack burners, all see their personal interests lying in a very different direction to that which leads to the "cat."
The deck was quite clear, the only person visible being the captain of the afterguard, who was taking a snooze on a pile of canvas and old sails that were stowed in a heap close by the main bitts; so, acting under the chaperonage of Larrikins, who officiated as bottle-holder, `Ugly' and I stood up, facing each other with our fists doubled, ready for action, in a nice little open space that seemed to have been left especially for the purpose between the heel of the bowsprit and the knight-heads.
I took at the time, it may be recollected, Master Larrikins' tale with a very good pinch of the proverbial salt, believing he only intended to `pull my leg'; but when on the present occasion the brig began to labour heavily and the green seas, rolling over from the open sea beyond Ushant, the wind having come on to blow a regular stiff sou'-wester, topped our bulwarks and made a clean sweep of the deck, I thought possibly the old joker Larrikins, who had left the training-ship long ere this and was serving as an ordinary seaman on a foreign station, might not have been `stretching' to such an extent as I had at the time imagined.
The crew of our other boat had meanwhile climbed aboard amidships, where they soon despatched the rest of the Arabs holding out there, a well- aimed shot from the rifle of Larrikins potting the green-turbaned chief of the gang.
Just at that moment, though, when starting forwards again, with the captain still pick-a-back on his shoulders, Larrikins stumbled over a dead Arab that lay in front of him, and down came he with `old Hankey Pankey' all in a heap together, with a couple of Somalis, at whom they were going full butt.
The long day and longer night he spent in the Domain, now on a bench, now on the grass under a Norfolk Island pine, the companion of perhaps the lowest class on earth, the Larrikins of Sydney.
"Ship my rowlocks!" as father would have said had he been there, but the Maxim made some of those blessed Arabs cough, I can tell you; ay, and put a goodish few to bed too! "Lor'," cried Larrikins, who was fighting like a bulldog by my side, "I never did see, blame me Tom, sich a bloomin' scrimmage in me life as this yere!"
The oven-hot iron roofs were coated with red dust; a few lackadaisical larrikins upheld occasional corner posts; dogs conducted municipal meetings here and there; the ugliness of the horses tied to the street posts, where they baked in the sun while their riders guzzled in the prolific "pubs.," bespoke a farming rather than a grazing district; and the streets had the distinction of being the most deplorably dirty and untended I have seen.
As for you, Larrikins, I have warned you before, and you had better keep your weather eye open, my joker!"
It was child's play to me; for, as I told Larrikins the first day I was on board, when he was trying to `pull my leg' with his yarns of the mountainous seas he met in the Channel cruising in the Martin, `shinning up the rigging' was no novelty to me.
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