With one consent the fourteen boats made for the shore, like the fleet of canoes described by the great Defoe. Nor long before each shallopʼs nose “grated on the golden sands.” The men in the dredging smacks looked at the sky to see if a squall was coming. And soon they got it, thick as hail, and as hot as pepper. The fourteen boats in battle array advanced upon them slowly, only two men rowing in each, all the rest standing up, and every man charged heavily. When they were at a nice wicket distance, old Mac gave the signal, and a flight of stones began, which, in the words of the ancient chroniclers, “well–nigh darkened the noonday sun.” The bravest dredger durst not show his head above the gunwale; for the Rushford stones are close of grain, and it is sweeter to start than to stop them. As for south–westers and dreadnoughts, they were no more use than vine–leaves in a storm of electric hail. “Ah, little then those mellow grapes their vine–leaf shall avail, So thickly rattles on _the tiles_ the pelting of the hail.” _Georg._ i. 448. The dredgers gave in, and hoisted a shirt as a signal for a parley. The Rushford men refused to hear a syllable about “snacks.” What they demanded was “unconditional surrender;” and the dredgers, having no cement–stones on board, were compelled to accept it. So they took up their bags, and walked the smacks off three miles away to their station, with very faint hopes indeed that the obliging body might follow them. The boatmen celebrated their victory with three loud cheers for Sandy Mac, and a glass of grog all round. Then they returned to the likeliest spot, and dragged hard all the afternoon. “Tarnation ‘cute body,” cried Ben, “as ever I come across. Whoʼd a thought as any perfessing Christian would have stuck to Davy Jonesʼs locker, and refooged the parson and clerk so? Spit on your grapples, my lads of wax, and better luck the cast after.” “The Lord kens the best,” replied Sandy Mac, with a long–drawn sigh, “us poor vessels canna do more than is the will of the Lord, boys. Howsomever, I brought a bit of bait, a few lug–worms, and a soft crab or two; and please the Lord Iʼll rig my line out, and see if the bass be moving. And likely there may be a tumbling cod on the run speering after the puir bodies. Ah, yes, the will of the Lord; we ates them, and they ates us.” The canny old Scotchman, without foregoing his share in the general venture—for he helped to throw the grapnels, or took a spell at the rudder—rigged out a hook on his own account, and fastened the line to the rowlocks. “Fair play, my son,” cried Ben, winking at his comrades; “us go snacks in what you catch, mind. And the will of the Lord be done.” “Dinna ye wish ye may get it?”—the old man glowered at him indignantly—“Iʼll no fish at all on that onderstanding.”