Part 8 (1/2)
yerself on the top of it for four! Horoo, Mister Sinton, darlint, is it yerself? Och, but this is the place intirely--goold and silver for the axin' a'most! Ah, ye needn't grin. Look here!”
Larry plunged both hands into the pockets of his trousers, and pulled them forth full of half and quarter dollars, with a few s.h.i.+ning little nuggets of gold interspersed among them.
Ned opened his eyes in amazement, and, taking his excited comrade apart from the crowd, asked how he had come by so much money.
”Come by it!” he exclaimed; ”ye could come by twice the sum, av ye liked. Sure, didn't I find that they wos chargin' tshoo dollars--aiqual to eight s.h.i.+llin's, I'm towld--for carryin' a box or portmanter the length o' me fut; so I turns porter all at wance, an' faix I made six dollars in less nor an hour. But as I was comin' back, I says to myself, says I, `Larry, ye'll be the better of a small gla.s.s o'
somethin'--eh!' So in I goes to a grog-shop, and faix I had to pay half-a-dollar for a thimbleful o' brandy, bad luck to them, as would turn the stomik o' a pig. I almost had a round wi' the landlord; but they towld me it wos the same iverywhere. So I wint and had another in the nixt shop I sees, jist to try; and it was thrue. Then a Yankee spies my knife,--the great pig-sticker that Bob Short swopped wi' me for my junk o' plum-duff off the Cape. It seems they've run out o' sich articles just at this time, and would give handfuls o' goold for wan.
So says I, `Wot'll ye give?'
”`Three dollars, I guess,' says wan.
”`Four,' says another; `he's chaitin' ye.'
”`Four's bid,' says I, mountin' on a keg o' baccy, and howldin up the knife; `who says more? It's the rale steel, straight from Manchester or Connaught, I misremimber which. Warranted to cut both ways, av ye only turn the idge round, and shove with a will.'
”I begood in joke; but faix they took me up in arnest, an' run up the price to twinty dollars--four pounds, as sure as me name's Larry--before I know'd where I wos. I belave I could ha' got forty for it, but I hadn't the heart to ax more, for it wasn't worth a bra.s.s b.u.t.ton.”
”You've made a most successful beginning, Larry. Have you any more knives like that one?”
”Sorrow a wan--more's the pity. But that's only a small bit o' me speckilations. I found six owld newspapers in the bottom o' me chist, and, would ye belave it, I sowld 'em, ivery wan, for half-a-dollar the pace; and I don't rightly know how much clear goold I've got by standin'
all mornin' at the post-office.”
”Standing at the post-office! What do you mean?”
”Nother more or less nor what I say. I suppose ye know the mail's comed in yisterday morning; so says I to myself this mornin', `Ye've got no livin' sowl in the owld country that's likely to write to ye, but ye better go, for all that, an' ax if there's letters. Maybe there is; who knows?' So away I wint, and sure enough I found a row o' men waitin'
for their letters; so I crushes for'ard--och! but I thought they'd ha'
hung me on the spot,--and I found it was a rule that `first come first sarved--fair play and no favour.' They wos all standin' wan behind another in a line half-a-mile long av it wos a fut, as patient as could be; some readin' the noosepapers, and some drinkin' coffee and tay and grog, that wos sowld by men as went up an' down the line the whole mornin'. So away I goes to the end o' the line, an' took my place, detarmined to stand it out; and, in three minutes, I had a tail of a dozen men behind me. `Faix, Larry,' says I, `it's the first time ye iver comminced at the end of a thing in order to git to the beginnin'.'
”Well, when I wos gittin' pretty near the post-office windy, I hears the chap behind me a-sayin' to the fellow behind him that he expected no letters, but only took up his place in the line to sell it to them what did. An' sure enough I found that lots o' them were there on the same errand. Just then up comes a miner, in big boots and a wide-awake.
”`Och,' says he, `who'll sell me a place?' and with that he offered a lot o' pure goold lumps.
”`Guess it's too little,' says the man next me.
”`Ah, ye thievin' blackguard!' says I. `Here, yer honer, I'll sell ye my place for half the lot. I can wait for me letter, more be token I'm not sure there is wan.' For, ye see, I wos riled at the Yankee's greed.
So out I steps, and in steps the miner, and hands me the whole he'd offered at first.
”`Take them, my man,' says he; `you're an honest fellow, and it's a trate to meet wan here.'”
”Capital,” cried Ned, laughing heartily; ”and you didn't try for a letter after all?”
”Porter there?” shouted a voice from the quay.
”That's me, yer honer. Here ye are,” replied the Irishman, bounding away with a yell, and shouldering a huge leathern trunk, with which he vanished from the scene, leaving Ned to pursue the train of thought evoked by his account of his remarkable experiences.
We deem it necessary here to a.s.sure the reader that the account given by Larry O'Neil of his doings was by no means exaggerated. The state of society, and the eccentricities of traffic displayed in San Francisco and other Californian cities during the first years of the gold-fever, beggars all description. Writers on that place and period find difficulty in selecting words and inventing similes in order to convey anything like an adequate idea of their meaning. Even eye-witnesses found it almost impossible, to believe the truth of what they heard and saw; and some have described the whole circle of life and manners there to have been more like to the wild, incongruous whirl of a pantomime than to the facts of real life.