"Have a care," shouted the smith; "if you drop them I'll beat you red-hot, and hammer ye so flat that the biggest flatterer as ever walked won't be able to spread ye out another half-inch."
"Mutton! oh!" exclaimed Forsyth, who had been some time trying to wrench the cover off the basket containing a roast leg, and at last succeeded.
"Here, spread them all out on this rock. You han't forgot the grog, I hope, steward?"
"No fear of him: he's a good feller, is the steward, when he's asleep partiklerly. The grog's here all right."
"Dinna let Dumsby git baud o't, then," cried Watt. "What! hae ye begood a'ready? Patience, man, patience. Is there ony saut?"
"Lots of it, darlin', in the say. Sure this shape must have lost his tail somehow. Och, murther! if there isn't Bobby Selkirk gone an' tumbled into Port Hamilton wid the cabbage, av it's not the carrots!"
"There now, don't talk so much, boys," cried Peter Logan. "Let's drink success to the Bell Rock Lighthouse."
It need scarcely be said that this toast was drunk with enthusiasm, and that it was followed up with "three times three".
"Now for a song. Come, Joe Dumsby, strike up," cried one of the men.
O'Connor, who was one of the most reckless of men in regard to duty and propriety, here shook his head gravely, and took upon himself to read his comrade a lesson.