At that there was the response of loud raps on the table with the heels of the long boots swung over various arms, and with several clay pipes that lost their heads in the encounter. Old Billy resumed his seat with a lofty glance of patronage at the men about him, which said as plainly as words themselves, "I tould ye to lave it all to me." "Proud, d'ye say? Look at him," muttered the fisherman sitting by Davy Fayle. Dan staggered up and shouldered his way to the elbow-chair at the head of the table. He had no sooner taken his seat than he shouted for the breakfast, and without more ado the breakfast was lifted direct on to the table from the pans and boilers that simmered on the hearth. First came the broth, well loaded with barley and cabbage; then suet puddings; and last of all the frying-pan was taken down from the wall, and four or five dozen of fresh herrings were made to grizzle and crackle and sputter over the fire. Dan ate ravenously, and laughed noisily, and talked incessantly as he ate. The men at first caught the contagion of his boisterous manners, but after a time they shook their tousled heads and laid them together in gravity, and began to repeat in whispers, "What's agate of the young mastha, at all, at all?" Away went the dishes, away went the cloth, an oil-lamp with its open mouth--a relic of some monkish sanctuary of the Middle Ages--was lifted from the mantel-shelf and put on the table for the receipt of custom; a brass censer, choked with spills, was placed beside it; pipes emerged from waistcoat-pockets, and pots of liquor with glasses and bottles came in from the outer bar. "Is it heavy on the liquor you're going to be, Billy?" said Ned, the mate; and old Billy replied with a superior smile and the lifting up of a whisky bottle, from which he had just drawn the cork. Then came the toasts. The chairman arose amid hip, hip, hooraa! and gave "Life to man and death to fish!" and Quilleash gave "Death to the head that never wore hair!" Then came more noise and more liquor, and a good deal of both in the vicinity of the chair. Dan struck up a song. He sang "Drink to Me Only," and the noisy company were at first hushed to silence and then melted to audible sobs. "Aw, man, the voice he has, anyway!" "And the loud it is, and the tender, too, and the way he slidders up and down, and no squeaks and jumps." "No, no; nothin' like squeezin' a tune out of an ould sow by pulling the tail at her." Old Billy listened to this dialogue among the fisher-fellows about him, and smiled loftily. "It's nothin'," he said, condescendingly--"that's nothin'. You should hear him out in the boat, when we're lying at anchor, and me and him together, and the stars just makin' a peep, and the moon, and the mar-fire, and all to that, and me and him lying aft and smookin', and having a glass maybe, but nothin' to do no harm--that's the when you should hear him. Aw, man alive, him and me's same as brothers."