The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1856-1888, 1882-11-18
One of Rory's Yarns.
lWrinen for The Pacific commercial Adosrti.er.

Stretched out on a mat spread over the smooth
sea beach, under the shade and lee of an aban-
doned canoe, whose long outrigger made q frame
for q thatch OF pandanus leaves, we laZily gazed
at the smooth sea sliding up and down the sandy
slope, and vaguely speculated-o on things wise and
otherwis until reused by Rory, who asked US for
a match. Rory, it should be stated, was an an
cient mariner. His real name was Aurora b.
reals, but since boyhood we had known him as
Rory" or Rory-Bory," when we wanted
any particular favor of the old man. He was
| short and thick-set, broad-Shouldered and grizzly.
| His "cant-hooks, as he was wont to call his
fingers, had, early in life, been trained TO grasp
ropes, for he used to tell Us that his daddy rugged
n " life line" out of n bit of spun yarn over his
cradle, so it was handy for him to catch hold of
| and raise up on to his beam ends; '' and then,
dye mind, / got the taste and smell of tar from
suckin' of the yarn end, and l allus liked it. 1t
takes me back to the cradle and my young
nanny, dye see." AS cabin-boy, fisherman,
A. B., man-oIwar's-man, and whaler, Rory had
been everywhere that ships could float, and not
| seldom where they could not, and at last had
! drifted ashore on this island, where he hoped to
lay his bones at last. At one time Rory had done
good service under his country's flag, and being
honorably discharged was in the receipt of a
small pension, augmented by n bit of prize
money that he had slowed away once, in n fit of
observation-disclosures, IN n savings bank and for
gotten, until after many years he had been
sought out and informed of the safety and
growth of the investment. On the income thus
derived, the Old man nSCi comfortably ana
smoked the pipe of peace. In fact he smoked
a great many pipes, and any portrait of Rory
that did not depict him with his short Guilty"
in n corner of his mouth would be incomplete,
unless, indeed. it might be one showing him in
the act of filling that same entity from IL palm
full of cut-up navy. The right-haud pocket
covered with n flap of his comfortable blue vest,
was devoted to his matches. The supply seemed
inexhaustible, and it needed to be, for one of
Rows habits was that of filling his pipe when
cpunUlanoInn a arO and HnTInO its continuance
TO use up many matches in trying to ignite the
tobacco ana not seriously interrupt the narrative.
Knowing this, when we heard him ask us for
a match, and. looking up saw him with loaded
pipe in hand looking round for an eligible SCAT,
we knew he had come to spin n yarn, and 50 mad
room for him near us in the shade and placed
a bunch of card matclSE.a at hand. pisposing
himself on the sand w7rh his back against the
canoe and his stumpy legs straight out be-
fore him as if slowing away under the weather
bulwarks- the old man scratched a match and
remarked: " Well young un"-we have been
called '+young un' by Rorey ever since he stop
ped calling US "my lad -" Well young un,
you look pretty comfortable here like as If
twas your watch on deck in the trades. =
nothing to do, and lots o. time t do 1t in, hey?'
and the old man chuckled as he threw away the
burned out match and lit another. "'Taint too
hot neither, just right, nawthing like what We
might get now ifyou's under the line or hugging
the sand on the Moroccy coast. That's the place
for no, weather-Phewl' and Rory snapped his
fingers partly in remembrance of Moroccy and
partly because the match he had been holding
had burnt down and had begun to melt the tar
off his finger-nails. "NYhen were you on the coast
of Morocco, Rory?" we enquired as if We hadn't
heard the yarn before -" Why young un,' he
answered as he broke off another match from
the card, twas way back when 1 was sailin' out
of Bedford, blubber huntin' and Capen Snow
in the Bunchiny struck a new ground way over
on the African coast in off thee anaries, here
he paused and pulled away most vigorously at
his pipe, but he tobacco was damp and slow to
ignite. WED gone in to Sintry bay, and was
ashore every day, for the landing was pretty
good when the swell didn't set in from the west,
and then twas rough. Sometimes we'd have a
reglar kqikoo, as these Kanakas call it, and then
the rollers ID come in two fathom high and as
smooth and heavy looking as a ships hull, until
they got in on light soundins, and then they'd
begin to drag on the bottom and roll over on
top and tumble down and break an roar all in