REAL IRISH!

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 140, 3 September 1927, Page 11

REAL IRISH!

In a town on tile coast o£ Western Australia, at about 10 o’clock one night, there came an urgent call for the police. The watchman on the wharf telephoned to the hotel, that a mob of “Liverpool Irish” firemen on one of the “Castle” boats had broken the peace, the captain’s arm, and most of the ship’s furniture, and were just then defying all constituted authority. He asked that the policesergeant be notified at once, as the men of the ship’s “black-gang” had been drinking and were in a really dangerous mood. Mickey, the hotel-porter, was sent across with the message. He hurried to the police station, and knocked vigorously, and at last the sleepy sergeant opened the door. “What’s all the row?" the sergeant demanded.

Breathlessly Mickey explained the position.

The captain’s predicament might have been exaggerated by the earnest porter, but he had been duly impressed by the account of the captain’s injury and manhandling, . and to a man of Mickey’s Irish sporting blood anything other than a man-for-man combat was abhorrent. “All right,” said the sergeant, “go back and telephone the w T harf that I’ll be right down.” Mickey sped back to the hotel with the encouraging message, and then waited in front of the hotel for the sergeant. In a half-hour the officer arrived in his pyjamas. “What seems to be the matter down there?” he inquired again. “We got a report a while ago that a crowd of Liverpool Irishmen were murdering the captain,” the publican answered.

"All right,” said the sergeant, “I’ll go back and put on my uniform.” There was another wait for the dilatory officer, and, as a matter of fact, his' task of quelling the mutiny was not an inviting one, for Liverpool firemen have a sinister reputation the world over, and apparently this was an especially insubordinate lot. The corpulent sergeant might have been pondering over, and regretting his vanished youth and sprightliness, but in the meantime, there came another call, this time an insistent one. Pandemonium reigned on the wharf.

The din could be heard right up in the town. At last the sergeant appeared, and came leisurely toward the scene of the disturbance. The uproar was waning. The sergeant quickened his pace. He arrived too late to be of service. The battle was over. For lack of other opposition, the Liverpool Irishmen must have demolished each other. When the sergeant arrived he found only one man who was not hors de combat —Mickey. Blood-bespattered