which
was choked in the bud with a gurgle as he sank again.

The men rushed to the rescue at once, and the next time Forsyth rose
he was seized by the hair of the head and dragged out of the
pool.

It has not been recorded what became of the fish that caused such an
alarming accident, but we may reasonably conclude that it sought
refuge in the ocean cavelets at the bottom of that miniature sea, for
Long Forsyth was so very large, and created such a terrible
disturbance therein, that no fish exposed to the full violence of the
storm could have survived it!

"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