I made no scruples, but forthwith arrayed myself in the slops contained in the bundle; in a pair of shag trousers, red flannel shirt, coarse blue cloth jacket, and no waistcoat.

“Now,” said Mr. Treenail, “stick a quid of tobacco in your cheek, and take the cockade out of your hat; or stop, leave it, and ship this striped woollen night cap—­so—­and come along with me.”

We left the house, and walked half a mile down the Quay.

Presently we arrived before a kind of low grog-shop—­a bright lamp was flaring in the breeze at the door, one of the panes of the glass of it being broken.

Before I entered, Mr. Treenail took me to one side—­“Tom, Tom Cringle, you must go into this crimp-shop; pass yourself off for an apprentice of the Guava, bound for Trinidad, the ship that arrived just as we started, and pick up all the knowledge you can regarding the whereabouts of the men, for we are, as you know, cruelly ill manned, and must replenish as we best may.”  I entered the house, after having agreed to rejoin my superior officer so soon as I considered I had obtained my object.  I rapped at the inner door, in which there was a small unglazed aperture cut, about four inches square; and I now, for the first time, perceived that a strong glare of light was cast into the lobby, where I stood, by a large argand with a brilliant reflector, that, like a magazine lantern, had been mortised into the bulkhead, at a height of about two feet above the door in which the spy-hole was cut.  My first signal was not attended to:  I rapped again, and, looking round, I noticed Mr. Treenail flitting backwards and forwards across the doorway, in the rain, his pale face and his sharp nose, with the sparkling drop at the end on’t, glancing in the light of the lamp.  I heard a step within, and a very pretty face now appeared at the wicket.

“Who are you saking here, an’ please ye?”

“No one in particular, my dear; but if you don’t let me in, I shall be lodged in jail before five minutes be over.”

“I can’t help that, young man,” said she; “but where are ye from, darling!”

“Hush—­I am run from the Guava, now lying at the Cove.”

“Oh,” said my beauty, “come in”; and she opened the door, but still kept it on the chain in such a way, that although, by bobbing, I creeped and slid in beneath it, yet a common-sized man could not possibly have squeezed himself through.  The instant I entered, the door was once more banged to, and the next moment I was ushered into the kitchen, a room about fourteen feet square, with a well-sanded floor, a huge dresser on one side, and over against it a respectable show of pewter dishes in racks against the wall.  There was a long stripe of a deal table in the middle of the room—­but no tablecloth—­at the bottom of which sat a large, bloated, brandy, or rather whisky faced savage, dressed in a shabby greatcoat of the hodden grey worn by the Irish peasantry, dirty