“Wot a hobject!” exclaimed Joe Dumsby, a short, thickset, little Englishman, who, having been born and partly bred in London, was rather addicted to what is styled chaffing.  “Was you arter a mermaid, shipmate?”

“Av coorse he was,” observed Ned O’Connor, an Irishman, who was afflicted with the belief that he was rather a witty fellow, “av coorse he was, an’ a merry-maid she must have bin to see a human spider like him kickin’ up such a dust in the say.”

“He’s like a drooned rotten,” observed John Watt; “tak’ aff yer claes, man, an’ wring them dry.”

“Let the poor fellow be, and get along with you,” cried Peter Logan, the foreman of the works, who came up at that moment.

With a few parting remarks and cautions, such as,—­“You’d better bring a dry suit to the rock next time, lad,” “Take care the crabs don’t make off with you, boy,” “and don’t be gettin’ too fond o’ the girls in the sea,” &c., the men scattered themselves over the rock and began their work in earnest, while Forsyth, who took the chaffing in good part, stripped himself and wrung the water out of his garments.

Episodes of this kind were not unfrequent, and they usually furnished food for conversation at the time, and for frequent allusion afterwards.

But it was not all sunshine and play, by any means.

Not long after Ruby joined, the fine weather broke up, and a succession of stiff breezes, with occasional storms, more or less violent, set in.  Landing on the rock became a matter of extreme difficulty, and the short period of work was often curtailed to little more than an hour each tide.

The rolling of the Pharos lightship, too, became so great that sea-sickness prevailed to a large extent among the landsmen.  One good arose out of this evil, however.  Landing on the Bell Rock invariably cured the sickness for a time, and the sea-sick men had such an intense longing to eat of the dulse that grew there, that they were always ready and anxious to get into the boats when there was the slightest possibility of landing.

Getting into the boats, by the way, in a heavy sea, when the lightship was rolling violently, was no easy matter.  When the fine weather first broke up, it happened about midnight, and the change commenced with a stiff breeze from the eastward.  The sea rose at once, and, long before daybreak, the Pharos was rolling heavily in the swell, and straining violently at the strong cable which held her to her moorings.

About dawn Mr. Stevenson came on deck.  He could not sleep, because he felt that on his shoulders rested not only the responsibility of carrying this gigantic work to a satisfactory conclusion, but also, to a large extent, the responsibility of watching over and guarding the lives of the people employed in the service.

“Shall we be able to land to-day, Mr. Wilson?” he said, accosting the master of the Pharos, who has been already introduced as the landing-master.