who were engaged on those
parts of the rocks that were a few inches higher, continued their
labours until the water crept up to them. Then they collected their
tools, and went to the boats, which lay awaiting them at the western
landing-place.

"Now, Dove," cried the landing-master, "come along; the crabs will be
attacking your toes if you don't."

"It's a shame to gi'e Ruby the chance o' a sair throat the very first
day," cried John Watt.

"Just half a minute more," said the smith, examining a pickaxe, which he
was getting up to that delicate point of heat which is requisite to give
it proper temper.

While he gazed earnestly into the glowing coals a gentle hissing sound
was heard below the frame of the forge, then a gurgle, and the fire
became suddenly dark and went out!

"I knowed it! always the way!" cried Dove, with a look of
disappointment. "Come, lad, up with the bellows now, and don't forget
the tongs."

In a few minutes more the boats pushed off and returned to the _Pharos_,
three and a half hours of good work having been accomplished before the
tide drove them away.

Soon afterwards the sea overflowed the whole of the rock, and
obliterated the scene of those busy operations as completely as though
it had never been!

CHAPTER NINE.

STORMS AND TROUBLES.

A week of fine weather caused Ruby Brand to fall as deeply in love with
the work at the Bell Rock as his comrades had done.

There was an amount of vigour and excitement about it, with a dash of
romance, which quite harmonised with his character. At first he had
imagined it would be monotonous and dull, but in experience he found it
to be quite the reverse.

Although there was uniformity in the general character of the work,
there was constant variety in many of the details; and the spot on which
it was carried on was so circumscribed, and so utterly cut off from all
the world, that the minds of those employed became concentrated on it in
a way that aroused strong interest in every trifling object.

There was not a ledge or a point of rock that rose ever so little above
the general level, that was not named after, and intimately associated
with, some event or individual. Every mass of seaweed became a familiar
object. The various little pools and inlets, many of them not larger
than a dining-room table, received high-sounding and dignified names--
such as _Port Stevenson, Port Erskine, Taylor's Track, Neill's Pool_,
etcetera. Of co