“Hold on tight, sir,” cried Shales, as the boat gave a heavy lurch away from the buoy, while the three painters stood leaning as far over the gunwale as was consistent with safety, and stretching their arms and brushes towards the object of their solicitude.
Stanley exerted himself powerfully; a reactionary swell helped him too much, and next moment the three men went, heads, hands, and brushes, plunging against the buoy!
“Och! morther!” cried Jerry, one of whose black hands had been forced against a white stripe, and left its imprint there. “Look at that, now!”
“All right,” cried Shales, dashing a streak of white over the spot.
“There’s no preventing it,” said Stanley, apologetically, yet laughing in spite of himself.
“I say, Jack, this is ’igh art, this is,” observed Moy, as he drew back to take another dip, “but I’m free to confess that I’d raither go courtin’ the girls than painting the buoys.”
“Oh! Dick, you borrowed that from me,” cried Billy; “for shame, sir!”
“Well, well,” observed Jerry, “it’s many a time I’ve held on to a painter, but I niver thought to become wan. What would ye call this now—a landscape or a portrait?”
“I would call it a marine piece,” said Stanley.
“How much, sir?” asked Dick Moy, who had got upon the wooden ring of the buoy, and was standing thereon attempting, but not very successfully, to paint in that position.