I'll give you a kiss, if you'll give me Pat Flannagan."
"And I another," said Maria, "for Felim."
The captain had one seated on each side of him; his head turned like a
dog-vane in a gale of wind; he did not know which to begin with; the
most ineffable good humour danced in his eyes, and the ladies saw at
once that the day was their own. Such is the power of beauty, that
this lord of the ocean was fain to strike to it. Judy laid a kiss on
his right cheek; Maria matched it on his left; the captain was the
happiest of mortals.
"Well, then," said he, "you have your wish; take your two men, for I
am in a hurry to make sail."
"Is it sail ye are after making; and do ye mane to take all those
pretty craturs away wid ye? No, faith! another kiss, and another man."
I am not going to relate how many kisses these lovely girls bestowed
on this envied captain. If such are captain's perquisites, who would
not be a captain? Suffice it to say, they released the whole of their
countrymen, and returned on board in triumph. The story reached
Halifax, where the good-humoured admiral only said he was sorry he was
not a captain, and all the happy society made themselves very merry
with it. The captain, who is as brave as he is good, was promoted soon
after, entirely from his own intrinsic merit, but not for this action,
in which candour and friendship must acknowledge he was defeated. The
Lord-Chancellor used to say, he always laughed at the settlement of
pin-money, as ladies were either kicked out of it or kissed out of it;
but his lordship, in the whole course of his legal practice, never saw
a captain of a man-of-war kissed out of forty men by two pretty Irish
girls.
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