Not knowing exactly, in what way to reply to Patrick’s last speech, Henry remained for the time silent, and they thus proceeded on their journey, ascending first to the top of one hill, then after passing through a fertile and beautiful valley, ascending another, until at last they got completely tired.  As they reached the second valley, Henry spoke as follows: 

‘I think we had better rest here awhile, Patrick.’

‘Just as you plase, sir,’ answered his companion, ’rest or go on, it’s all one to Paddy O’Leary.’

‘Then I guess we will stop here,’ said Henry.

So saying, he seated himself on the luxuriant green grass, beneath a fragrant orange tree, and Patrick was about to follow his example, when the sudden appearance of three men on the summit of an adjacent eminence, greeted the curious gaze which he cast around, and caused him to exclaim: 

’By the powers of mud and blarney, master Henry, if there is no four legged bastes upon this illigant bit of an island, there’s plenty of two legged ones.’

‘What do you mean,’ exclaimed Henry, starting to his feet.

’What do I mane?  An sure, and what shall I mane, yer honor, except just what I said?  Just look at the top of that young mountain yonder, and you will see two ugly looking two legged bastes, headed by a third, who looks for all the world like the horrid baste with ’sivin heads and ten horns,’ that Father McGrave used to tell us was stabled in purgatory, and ridden by the very ould divil himself.’

Turning his eyes in the direction intimated, Henry immediately discovered the three strong men to whom Patrick had alluded, and they seemed at the same time to have seen him, for soon afterwards he observed that they were descending the hill, and walking swiftly towards the place where he and his servant were standing.

’By the boys of Bulskerry, them divils are all armed, every mother’s son of them,’ exclaimed O’Leary, as the strangers gained a near approach to them.

‘So they are, sure enough,’ answered Henry.  ’But what shall we do, Pat, run away, or stop and see what they want of us?’

’It would surely be the asiest and most agreeable for both of us, to show them a light pair of heels, or, in yer honor’s own words, to run away, that is, if so be that we had any where to run to,—­but as we haven’t, why, the best thing we can be after doing, is to—­to do the best we can,—­by staying where we am.’

Having arrived at this very logical, and important conclusion, our honest Hibernian flourished his shillalah above his head, but the next moment it was snatched from his grasp by Blackbeard, who cast it away to a considerable distance.

‘Bad luck to yer, for a murthering blackguard,’ exclaimed Pat, as nothing daunted, he closed in with the pirate, and with his superior strength, would have easily crushed him to the earth, had not one of his (Blackbeard’s) comrades struck poor Pat a violent blow on the head with the butt of his pistol, which caused him to let go his hold, and as he afterwards averred, ’knocked the life from his head down to the inds of his toes.’