“Howld on, boys,” cried O’Connor, stretching out his hand as if to command silence; “you’ll scare the dove from his cot altogether av ye roar like that!”

“Surely they’re sendin’ us a fire to warm us,” observed one of the men, pointing to a boat which had put off from the Smeaton, and was approaching the rock by way of Macurich’s Track.

“What can’d be, I wonder?” said Watt; “I think I can smell somethin’.”

“I halways thought you ’ad somethink of an old dog in you,” said Dumsby.

“Ay, man!” said the Scot with a leer, “I ken o’ war beasts than auld dowgs.”

“Do you? come let’s ’ear wat they are,” said the Englishman.

“Young puppies,” answered the other.

“Hurrah! dinner, as I’m a Dutchman,” cried Forsyth.

This was indeed the case.  Dinner had been cooked on board the Smeaton and sent hot to the men; and this,—­the first dinner ever eaten on the Bell Rock,—­was the second of the memorable events before referred to.

The boat soon ran into the creek and landed the baskets containing the food on Hope’s Wharf.

The men at once made a rush at the viands, and bore them off exultingly to the flattest part of the rock they could find.

“A regular picnic,” cried Dumsby in high glee, for unusual events, of even a trifling kind, had the effect of elating those men more than one might have expected.

“Here’s the murphies,” cried O’Connor, staggering over the slippery weed with a large smoking tin dish.

“Mind you don’t let ’em fall,” cried one.

“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.