men at that moment.

"Och! be aisy," cried Jerry, ducking as he spoke, and thus escaping a
blow from the buoy, which would have cracked his head against the
vessel's side like a walnut.

"Heave away, lad!"

The man at the windlass obeyed. The irresistible steam-winch caused the
huge chain to grind and jerk in its iron pulley, and the enormous
globular iron buoy came quietly over the side, black here and brown
there, and red-rusted elsewhere; its green beard of sea-weed dripping
with brine, and its sides grizzled with a six-months' growth of
barnacles and other shell-fish.

It must not be supposed that, although the engine did all the heavy
lifting, the men had merely to stand by and look on. In the mere
processes of capturing the buoy and making fast the chains and hooks,
and fending off, etcetera, there was an amount of physical effort--
straining and energising--on the part of the men, that could scarcely be
believed unless seen. Do not fancy, good reader, that we are attempting
to make much of a trifle in this description. Our object is rather to
show that what might very naturally be supposed to be trifling and easy
work, is, in truth, very much the reverse.

The buoy having been lifted, another of the same size and shape, but
freshly painted, was attached to the chain, tumbled over the side, and
left in its place. In this case the chain and sinker did not require
renewing, but at the next [one] visited it was found that buoy, chain,
and sinker had to be lifted and renewed.

And here again, to a landsman like Stanley, there was much to interest
and surprise. If a man, ignorant of such matters, were asked what he
would do in the event of his having to go and shift one of those buoys,
he might probably reply, "Well, I suppose I would first get hold of the
buoy and hoist it on board, and then throw over another in its place;"
but it is not probable that he would reflect that this process involved
the violent upturning of a mass of wood or metal so heavy that all the
strength of the dozen men who had to struggle with it was scarce
sufficient to move gently even in the water; that, being upturned, an
inch chain had to be unshackled--a process rendered troublesome, owing
to the ponderosity of the links which had to be dealt with, and the
constrained position of the man who wrought,--and that the chain and
sinker had to be hauled out of the sand or mud into which they had sunk
so much, that the donkey-engine h