"Why, what do you think?" said the doctor. "When he went to London to
apply for his billet, the Lieutenant said to him: 'You must have been
down there before, young man.' 'No such luck,' said Martin. 'But you
know as much about the Antarctic already as the whole boiling of us put
together,' said the Lieutenant. Yes, by St. Patrick and St. Thomas, he's
a geographer any way."
I admitted that much, and to encourage the doctor to go on I told him
where I had seen Martin last, and what he had said of his expedition.
"In Rome you say?" said the doctor, with a note of jealousy. "You beat
me there then. I saw him off from London, though. A few of us Dublin
boys, being in town at the time, went down to Tilbury to see him sail,
and when they were lifting anchor and the tug was hitching on, we stood
on the pier--sixteen strong--and set up some of our college songs. 'Stop
your noising, boys,' said he, 'the Lieutenant will be hearing you.' But
not a bit of it. We sang away as long as we could see him going out with
the tide, and then we went back in the train, smoking our pipes like so
many Vauxhall chimneys, and narra a word out of the one of us.
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