"Ay, but I'm damned shair there's no a lick gaun unless ye take me hame," answered Donaldson. "If I ha'e to be creeled, I'll be creeled right, an' every one o' ye'll gang hame wi' me afore ye get a taste."
"Oh, but we'll see to that, chaps," said old Lauder. "Here's a hutch, get him in an' aff wi' him."
The victim pretended to resist, and stoutly maintained that they should not creel him. He was seized by half a dozen pairs of arms, and with much expenditure of energy and breath, deposited in the hutch. Some considerate person had put some straw and old bags in the "carriage" to make it more comfortable, and a few of the wags had chalked inscriptions, the reverse of complimentary, all over it.
"There, noo', boys," said old Lauder, who had been busy hanging lighted pit lamps round Tam's cap, "gi'e him a guid run to the bottom, and see that he gets a guid bump in the lye."
The men ran the hutch to the "bottom" straight against the full tubs ready to be sent to the surface.
"Come on, Sourocks, let us up," called Allan to the old man who acted as "bottomer."
"Hell to the up will ye get!" replied the old fellow, "I'm gaun to put on these hutches first."
"No, ye'll no', an' if ye do, you'll gang into the 'sump,' an' we'll chap the bell oorsels"—the sump being the lodgment into which the water gathered before pumping operations could start.
"Sourocks" thought discretion the better part of valor in this case, and swearing quietly to himself, he signaled to the engineman at the top to draw them up.
"He's no gaun to walk hame," said Allan, as they all gathered again on the pit head. "We'll take the hutch hame wi' Tam in it. Put a rope on it, and we'll draw the damned thing through the moor, an' maybe Tam'll mind the day he was creeled as lang as he lives."