ATRICK O’FLYNN DELANEY had red hair and his whiskers were red; but when I came to know him better I found that one eye was often blacker than the other. He was a sailorman, and had the immemorial gift of speech that the sea bestows upon her sons so that they tell tales of the strange things they have seen and done. His gift in this respect was blurred somewhat by a brogue that was thick as the San Francisco fog on the night we met across a table in the Harpoon Oyster House.
Our spoons had rattled in the emptied bowls at almost the same instant.
I said—
“Shall we have another?”
“Shure,” said he. “An’ we’ll be afther tossin’ up to see who pays for it.”
I tossed a dime. He called heads, and heads it came.
“Lucky thing for you that Oi win, because Oi haven’t the money to pay for two more bowls of oysther soup. An’ shure as Oi’m here, ’t was less than six month ago that Oi was one of the richest men in the whole South Seas—f’r ten minutes, but no longer. Aye, wealth flies. Me an’ Buck O’Malley, we were both rich as nabobs. ’T was oysthers as did it.
T’S not necessary (he continued) t0 explain as how me an’ Buck O’Malley come to be there on that little island of Rigoro, where was only a Dutch trader an’ lots of naygurs; for that’s a story of itself that Oi’ll keep to meself till Oi know you better.
But Buck O’Malley he borrow’d the Dutchman’s schooner widout asking for it. And though he had one of his own, he borrow’d the Dutchman’s naygur wife the same way. Oh, Buck O’Malley had a way wid womin! “” Him bein’ no sailorman Oi went along to show him how to run the thing, ’r else he’d av gone an’ drowned hisself, which Oi wish to Hivin he had done in his cradle. Yis, many’s the time Oi av wisht O’Malley ten fathoms deep in for ever bein’ born. An’ he’s there now, praise Hivin; for if it hadn’t been him that went, ’t would av been me. One of us had to go. An’ it’s always better for the worst man to go first, f’r don’t he av to roast longer than a good one? Shure he do.
Well, we got to where we was goin’, and O’Malley ’d propppd hisself up agin the deckhouse, pipe in hand, an’ watched for the oysthers the womin ’d bring up out of the lagoon.
Me—Oi couldn’t endure the sight of such laziness in a full-growed man, so Oi’d go sleep up in the bows till it was time to ate.
Both of them womin was in love wid O’Malley for his teeth was filled wid chips of the blarney stone. An’ they work like Trojans, each a-thinkin’ to get a little more of his love than th’ other by pullin’ up the oysthers. There was sharks big as th’ divils ye can’t see but are afraid of when you are knee-high to a grasshopper an’ some old grandmother scares the stuffin’ out of you wid witch-tales. But them sharks didn’t trouble O’Malley f’r he couldn’t swim.
Now Oi’m a Christian, an Oi don’t love naygur womin. They’re too handy wid knives an’ ugly in other ways.
An’ when Oi wasn’t sleepin’ Oi cursed meself for bein’ the fool to help a man steal a boat an’ go off wid a pair of wives, neither of which was mine, thank Hivin.
Oi’m afther telling you it was hot there in that eddy of wid nothin’ to do but to wisht Oi hadn’t done it; an’ Oi told O’Malley he was more of a fool than meself for he expected to get rich.
Them oysthers was the biggest oysthers that ever growed on an oysther-tree down in the Divil’s garden. Sometimes it ’ud take O’Malley and his two womin to lift one from the water afther it was brought up.
One of these womin he was callin’ Kate, and the other were Betsy. And he always was a-tellin’ of Kate on the quiet that she were his true love; an’ bless you, but ever chanct he got he was a-tellin’ of the same thing to Betsy. And a swearin’ to each that he loved her dearer than his own soul, which were ondoubtedly true for he didn’t care any more about his soul than Oi do for an empthy bottle of whisky.
Oi knew no good ’ud come of it and told him so, for it’s bad luck to love one womin, an’ O’Malley were busy wid two. He said they were sweet little things wid no harm in ’em.
“Childers of nathure,” he called ’em.
Says Oi, “Look at their skins and ye can see who their father is. They’ve got coaldust on ’em and smell of sulfur.”
“That’s coconuts-oil,” says he.
“But the coal-dust, O’Malley?”
“Kisses from the sun,” says he.
“Oi like ’em the color that shows when they’ve took a bath,” says Oi.
“An’ don’t you know,” says he, “all womin look alike in the dark?”
“You’re a liar, O’Malley,” says Oi.
“Oi wouldn’t be gettin’ on wid the ladies if Oi wasn’t,” says he.