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"Has she any sisters?" enquired Joe Dumsby eagerly, as Ned folded the letter and replaced it in his pocket. "Six of 'em," replied Ned; "every one purtier and better nor another." "Is it a long way to Galway?" continued Joe. "Not long; but it's a coorious thing that Englishmen never come back from them parts whin they wance ventur' into them."
Peeping round the corner of the oaken partition that separated the manhole from the apartment, he beheld a sight which filled his heart with gladness, for there, seated on a camp-stool, with his back leaning against the dresser, his face lighted up by the blaze of a splendid fire, which burned in a most comfortable-looking kitchen range, and his hands drawing forth most pathetic music from a violin, sat his old friend Joe Dumsby, while opposite to him on a similar camp-stool, with his arm resting on a small table, and a familiar black pipe in his mouth, sat that worthy son of Vulcan, Jamie Dove.
Ruby divided his time between the kitchen and lantern, lending a hand in each, but, we fear, interrupting the work more than he advanced it. That day it fell calm, and the sun shone brightly. "We'll have fog to-night," observed Dumsby to Brand, pausing in the operation of polishing a reflector, in which his fat face was mirrored with the most indescribable and dreadful distortions.
"Ah! poor things," said Forsyth, in answer to Ruby's look of wonder, "they often visit us in foggy weather. I suppose they get out to sea in the fog and can't find their way back to land, and then some of them chance to cross our light and take refuge on it." "Now I'll go out and get to-morrow's dinner," said Dumsby.
Ate yer dinner, lad, and howld yer tongue." "O Ned, I didn't think your jealousy would show out so strong," retorted his comrade. "Now, then, Dumsby, fire away, if it was only to aggravate him." Thus pressed, Joe Dumsby took a deep draught of the small-beer with which the men were supplied, and began a song of his own composition.
"They're mad," said Logan, who, with a group of the men, watched the motions of their would-be visitors. "No," observed Joe Dumsby; "they are brave, but hignorant." "Faix, they won't be ignorant long!" cried Ned O'Connor, as the little boat approached the rock, propelled by two active young rowers in Guernsey shirts, white trousers, and straw hats.
"Have it out, man, at once." "Bam a red-hot skewer into it." "No, no; let it alone, and it'll go away." Such was the advice tendered, and much more of a similar nature, to the suffering man. "There's nothink like 'ot water an' cold," said Joe Dumsby in the tones of an oracle. "Just fill your mouth with bilin' 'ot water, an' dip your face in a basin o' cold, and it's sartain to cure."
While he was seated by the kitchen fire chatting with his friend the smith, sometime between nine o'clock and midnight, Dumsby summoned him to the lantern to "help in catching to-morrow's dinner!" Dove laughed at the summons, and they all went up.
Come, Joe, give us `Rule, Britannia' `pity she don't rule the waves straighter, as somebody writes somewhere." So saying, Dove resumed his pipe, and Dumsby his fiddle, while Ruby proceeded to the staircase that led to the rooms above.
Sorrow wan o' me iver gits to slape, but I'm turned up immadiately to go an' poke away at that rock faix, it's well named the Bell Rock, for it makes me like to bellow me lungs out wid vexation." "That pun is below contempt," said Joe Dumsby, who came up at the moment. "That's yer sort, laddies; ye're guid at ringing the changes on that head onyway," cried Watt.
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