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"Thrice welcome, Sir Knight of Dames," said the Earl; "here you rove gallantly, and at free will, through our dominions, fulfilling of appointments, and achieving amorous adventures; while we are condemned to sit in our royal halls, as dull and as immovable as if our Majesty was carved on the stern of some Manx smuggling dogger, and christened the King Arthur of Ramsey."
Fly with us now, good reader, once more out among the breeze-ruffled billows of the North Sea. It was blowing a fine, fresh, frosty fishing breeze from the nor'-west on a certain afternoon in December. The Admiral Manx Bradley was guiding his fleet over that part of the German Ocean which is described on the deep-sea fisherman's chart as the Swarte, or Black Bank.
That was their way of keeping up the recollection of Pete's existence; and the uses they put poor Pete to were many and peculiar. One night "The Manx Fairy" was merry and noisy with a "Scaltha," a Christmas supper given by the captain of a fishing-boat to the crew that he meant to engage for the season.
They fondled it and stroked it, and coo-ed at it as if it were a new baby. All the women past their very first youth seemed toothless. I wondered if it could be a characteristic of the tribe sort of Manx Eskimo. I asked the Prophet what was the cause of the universal shortage, and was told that the Eskimo women all chew the sealskin to soften it for making into boots.
"Been buying a Nickey at Peel to-day, Phil," he said; "good little boat a reg'lar clipper. Aw, I'm going to start on the herrings myself next sayson sir, and what for shouldn't I? Too many of the Manx ones are giving the fishing the goby. There's life in the ould dog yet, though. Would be, anyway, if them rusty Kays would be doing anything for the industry.
The first good result will be the choking-off of all the Scotch and Manx fishermen who infest our seas. At present they bring their fish into Dublin, whence it is sent all over Ireland, competing against Irish fishermen. Then we'll tax all manufactured goods.
"Others have done it, Kitty why shouldn't I? Manx ones too silver kings and diamond kings, and the Lord knows what. No fear of me! When I come back it's a queen you'll be, woman my queen, anyway, with pigs and cattle and a girl to wash and do for you." "So that's how you'd bribe a poor girl is it? But you'd have to turn religious, or father would never consent."
"You don't read me," he said irritably. "These places are few, and Manx advocates are as thick as flies in a glue-pot. For every office there must be fifty applicants, but training counts for something, and influence for something, and family for something." Auntie Nan began to be penetrated as by a chill.
There are phrases in the Manx and the Anglo-Manx of my own little race which I can never hear spoken without the sense of something tingling and throbbing between my flesh and my skin. Why? Because it is the home-speech of my own island, and whatever she is, whatever fate may befall her, however she may treat me, she is my mother and I am her son.
I thought I was never going to see a glad day again, and if the sky would ever be blue I would be breaking my heart. But what is the Manx poet saying, sir? 'I have no will but Thine, O God. That's me, sir, truth enough, and since the lil one has been mending I've never been so happy in my life." Philip muttered some commonplace, and put his thumb into the baby's hand.
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