"How the divil can I pull, your honour, when there's that fellow Jones breaking the very back o' me with his oar, and he never touching the water all the while?"
"You lie," cried Jones; "I'm pulling the boat by myself against the whole of the larbard oars."
"He's rowing _dry_, your honour--only making bilave."
"Do you call this rowing dry?" cried another, as a sea swept over the boat, fore and aft, wetting everybody to the skin.
"Now, your honour, just look and see if I ain't pulling the very arms off me?" cried Sullivan.
"Is there water enough to cross the bridge, Swinburne?" said I to the coxswain.
"Plenty, Mr Simple; it is but quarter ebb, and the sooner we are on board the better."
We were now past Devil's Point, and the sea was very heavy: the boat plunged in the trough, so that I was afraid that she would break her back. She was soon half full of water, and the two after-oars were laid in for the men to bale. "Plase your honour, hadn't I better cut free the legs of them ducks and geese, and allow them to swim for their lives?" cried Sullivan, resting on his oar; "the poor birds will be drowned else in their own _iliment_."
By this time the drunken men in the bottom of the boat began to be very uneasy, from the quantity of water which washed about them, and made several staggering attempts to get on their legs. They fell down again upon the ducks and geese, the major part of which were saved from being drowned by being suffocated. The sea on the bridge was very heavy; and although the tide swept us out, we were nearly swamped. Soft bread was washing about the bottom of the boat; the parcels of sugar, pepper, and salt, were wet through with the salt water, and a sudden jerk threw the captain's steward, who was seated upon the gunwale close to the after-oar, right upon the whole of the crockery and eggs, which added to the mass of destruction. A few more seas shipped completed the job, and the gun-room steward was in despair. "That's a darling," cried Sullivan: "the politest boat in the whole fleet. She makes more bows and curtseys than the finest couple in the land. Give way, my lads, and work the crater stuff out of your elbows, and the first lieutenant will see us all so sober, and so wet in the bargain, and think we're all so dry, that perhaps he'll be after giving us a raw nip when we get on board."