'What's yon?' presently said Big Dan Murphy, the leader of the group, pointing to a dark object tossing among the surf. They formed a line joining hands, and he dashed in and pulled it ashore. It proved to be a cask of rum.
'Lend a hand, boys,' he said, 'to take it up to me shanty, an' we'll have a sup the night whin ahls over.'
Nothing further came ashore, and the night saw a dozen men gathered in Murphy's hut. The village stood a little back from the beach in a dip of the land that sheltered it from the boisterous fury of the Atlantic gales; but Murphy's hut stood alone on higher ground and nearer the sea, the sentinel and outpost of the rest.
The men sat round the open turf fire upon the hearth, each with a tin porringer in his hand, and the cask in their midst.
'It's well that the ould gauger's gone,' said one with gloomy satisfaction, 'or he'd be pokin' his ugly nose into this. He always kim down on the night ov a storrum to say what had kim ashore.'
'They say,' replied another, 'that this man is worse agin. New twigs swape clane an' he's for iver drivin' aroun' the counthry wid his trap an' his little wee black pony.'
As he spoke there was a knock at the door, and the gauger stood in their midst.
'How's this, boys?' he said. 'What have you got here? Your name's Dan Murphy, isn't it?'
'Ay, till the bone breaks,' returned Dan briefly.
'Don't you know that this doesn't belong to you? Flotsam and jetsam belongs to the Crown and the owner of the land upon which it is washed ashore.'