barges signalled from far away by their curls of woolly smoke, the brown fishing fleet beyond Ringsend, the big white sailingvessel which was being discharged on the opposite quay.  Mahony said it would be right skit to run away to sea on one of those big ships and even I, looking at the high masts, saw, or imagined, the geography which had been scantily dosed to me at school gradually taking substance under my eyes.  School and home seemed to recede from us and their influences upon us seemed to wane.

We crossed the Liffey in the ferryboat, paying our toll to be transported in the company of two labourers and a little Jew with a bag.  We were serious to the point of solemnity, but once during the short voyage our eyes met and we laughed.  When we landed we watched the discharging of the graceful threemaster which we had observed from the other quay.  Some bystander said that she was a Norwegian vessel.  I went to the stern and tried to decipher the legend upon it but, failing to do so, I came back and examined the foreign sailors to see had any of them green eyes for I had some confused notion....  The sailors’ eyes were blue and grey and even black.  The only sailor whose eyes could have been called green was a tall man who amused the crowd on the quay by calling out cheerfully every time the planks fell: 

“All right!  All right!”

When we were tired of this sight we wandered slowly into Ringsend.  The day had grown sultry, and in the windows of the grocers’ shops musty biscuits lay bleaching.  We bought some biscuits and chocolate which we ate sedulously as we wandered through the squalid streets where the families of the fishermen live.  We could find no dairy and so we went into a huckster’s shop and bought a bottle of raspberry lemonade each.  Refreshed by this, Mahony chased a cat down a lane, but the cat escaped into a wide field.  We both felt rather tired and when we reached the field we made at once for a sloping bank over the ridge of which we could see the Dodder.

It was too late and we were too tired to carry out our project of visiting the Pigeon House.  We had to be home before four o’clock lest our adventure should be discovered.  Mahony looked regretfully at his catapult and I had to suggest going home by train before he regained any cheerfulness.  The sun went in behind some clouds and left us to our jaded thoughts and the crumbs of our provisions.

There was nobody but ourselves in the field.  When we had lain on the bank for some time without speaking I saw a man approaching from the far end of the field.  I watched him lazily as I chewed one of those green stems on which girls tell fortunes.  He came along by the bank slowly.  He walked with one hand upon his hip and in the other hand he held a stick with which he tapped the turf lightly.  He was shabbily dressed in a suit of greenish-black and wore what we used to call a jerry hat with a high crown.  He seemed to be fairly old for his moustache was ashen-grey.  When he passed at our feet he glanced up at us quickly and then continued his way.  We followed him with our eyes and saw that when he had gone on for perhaps fifty paces he turned about and began to retrace his steps.  He walked towards us very slowly, always tapping the ground with his stick, so slowly that I thought he was looking for something in the grass.