“Well, Skipper—you’ve thought better of it—I’ve no right in the world, have I?—You will turn her round?”
“Totally impossible, Sir—quite out of my power.”
“Very well, very well, very well indeed!” the Original’s temper was getting up as well as the sea.
[Pg 436]
 “But mind, Sir—I protest. I protest against you, Sir—and against the ship—and the ocean, Sir—and everything! I’m getting further and further out—but, remember, I’ve no right! You will take the consequences. I have no right to be kidnapped—ask the Crown lawyers, if you think fit!”
After this denouncement, the Speaker began to pace up and down like the Captain, but at the opposite side of the deck. He was on the boil, however, as well as the engine,—and every time that he passed near the man whom he considered as his Sir Hudson Lowe, he gave vent to the inward feeling in a jerk of the head, accompanied by a short pig-like grunt. Now and then it broke out in words, but always the same four monosyllables, “This—is—too—bad”—with a most emphatic fall of the foot to each. At last it occurred to a stout pompous-looking personage to interpose as a mediator. He began by dilating on the immense commercial importance of a punctual delivery of letters—thence he insisted on the heavy responsibility of the Captain; with a promise of an early return packet from Holyhead—and he was entering into a congratulation of the fineness of the weather, when the Original thought it was time to cut him short.
“My good Sir—you’ll excuse me. The case is nobody’s but my own. You are a regular passenger. You have a right to be in this packet—you have a right to go to Holyhead—or to Liverpool—or to Gibraltar,—or to the world’s end—if—you—like. But I choose to be in Dublin. What right have I to be here then? Not—one—atom! I’ve no right to be in this vessel—and the Captain there knows it. I’ve no right (stamping) to be on this deck! I have no more right to be tossing at sea (waving his arms up and down) than the Pigeon House!”
“It is a very unpleasant situation, I allow, Sir,” said the Captain to the stout Passenger.
[Pg 437]
 “But, as I have told the gentleman, my hands are tied. I can do nothing—though nobody is more sorry for his inconvenience.”
“Inconvenience be hanged!” exclaimed the Oddity, in a passion at last. “It is NO inconvenience, Sir! Not—the—smallest. But that makes no difference as to my being here. It’s that—and that alone,—I dispute all right to!”
 
SEA RIDDLE. “DO YOU GIVE IT UP?”
“Well, but my dear, good Sir,” expostulated the pompous man; “admitting the justice of your premises, the hardship is confessedly without remedy.”
“To be sure it is,” said the Captain, “every inch of it. All I can say is, that the gentleman’s passage shall be no expense to him!”
“Thankee—of course not,” said the Original with a sneer.
[Pg 438]
 “I’ve no right to put my hand in my pocket! Not that I mind expense. But it’s my right I stand up for, and I defy you both to prove that I have any right—or any shadow of a right—to be in your company! I’ll tell you what, Skipper”—but before he could finish the sentence, he turned suddenly pale, made a most grotesque wry face, and rushed forward to the bow of the vessel. The Captain exchanged a significant smile with the stout gentleman; but before they had quite spoken their minds of the absent character, he came scrambling back to the binnacle, upon which he rested with both hands, while he thrust his working visage within a foot of the skipper&rsquo............