r a bite of supper,
and until beds were shuffled about and shakedowns fetched out. And
high was the sport and great the laughter at the queer shifts the
house was put to that it might find clean rigging for so many, on
even so short a cruise. When the six Fairbrothers had lent all the
change they had of breeches and shirts, the maids had to fish out
from their trunks a few petticoats and some gowns, for the sailors
still unfurnished. But the full kit was furnished out at length, and
when the ship's company mustered down in the kitchen from the rooms
above, all in their motley colors and queer mixture of garments, with
their grizzled faces wiped dry, but their hair still wet and lank and
glistening, no one could have guessed, from the loud laughter
wherewith they looked each other over, that only an hour before
Death itself had so nearly tricked them. Like noisy children let out
of school they all were, now that they were snugly housed; for a
seagoing man, however he may be kicked about on the sea, is not used
to be downhearted on the land. And if two or three of the company
continued to complain of their misfortunes, their growlings but lent
zest to the merriment of the rest. So that they laughed loud when old
Davy, cutting a most ridiculous figure in a linsey-wolsey petticoat
and a linen bodice that would not meet over his hairy chest, began to
grumble that he had followed the sea forty years and never been
wrecked before, as if that were the best of all reasons why he should
not come by such rough harm now, and a base advantage taken of him by
Providence in his old age.

And louder still they laughed at the skipper himself when still
sorely troubled by his evil luck, he wanted to know what all their
thanking God was for, since his good ship lay a rotten hulk on a
cruel reef; and if it was so very good of Providence to let them off
that rock, it would have been better far not to let them on to it.
And loudest of all they laughed, and laughed again, when an Irish
sailor told them, with all his wealth of brogue, of a prayer that he
had overheard old Davy pray while they hung helpless on the rock,
thinking never to escape from it. "Oh, Lord, only save my life this
once, and I'll smuggle no more," the Manxman had cried; "and it's not
for myself but ould Betty I ax it, for Thou knowest she's ten years
dead in Maughold churchyard with twenty rolls of good Scotch cloth in
the grave atop of her. But I had nowhere else to put