10
I tell you Arabia is a very decent sort of place, as like West Carbery as one egg is like another, only there is a little more sand there.
Just as we were talking, a ship hove in sight, scudding so beautiful before the wind: Ah! then, sir, said I, will you drop me on the ship, if you please? We are not fair over it, said he. We are, said I. We are not, said he: if I dropped you now, you would go splash into the sea. I would not, says I; I know better than that, for it is just clean under us, so let me drop now at once.
If you must, you must, said he. There, take your own way; and he opend his claw, and faith he was right—sure enough I came down plump into the very bottom of the salt sea! Down to the very bottom I went, and I gave myself up then for ever, when a whale walked up to me, scratching himself after his night’s rest, and looked me full in the face, and never the word did he say; but lifting up his tail, he splashed me all over again with the cold salt water, till there wasn’t a dry stitch upon my whole carcase; and I heard somebody saying—’twas a voice I knew too—Get up, you drunken brute, out of that; and with that I woke up, and there was Judy with a tub full of water which she was splashing all over me;—for, rest her soul! though she was a good wife, she never could bear to see me in drink, and had a bitter hand of her own.
Get up, said site again; and of all places in the parish, would no place sarve your turn to lie down upon but under the ould walls of Corrigaphooka? an uneasy resting I am sure you had of it. And sure enough I had; for I was fairly bothered out of my senses with eagles, and men of the moons, and flying ganders, and whales driving me through
