but
inferior in every other way to the striped bass.

It was a job to pitch the fish together and out of the way, and then
clean the blood, slime, and wet from our deck and get ready for making
sail; but after some work it was done, and our lines stowed away.

"Now, boys," said the Captain, "we will have dinner, and get under way
again. As the wind has hauled around to the east, we will take our
course for the north. I want to show you that shore, it is so bold and
wild. With such a stiff wind I reckon we can run up ten miles nearly,
and then turn about and get home _easily_ before dark. I say, boys,
won't Mr Clare wish he had had a hand in catching that haul?"

Having finished the cold dinner with such an appetite as pleasure,
exercise, and sea air give, we made sail and stood to the northward.
The breeze was so fresh before long that the Captain told us to take a
reef in our mainsail. Walter held the helm, and in little more than an
hour we were sailing near the grand rugged shore that Captain Mugford
had wished us to see. Here and there, in little coves defended by rocky
sides, were the cottages of fishermen, and then great headlands of
cavernous stone dashed by the waves. Again the shore fell to a lower
level, and pines and other trees clustered together to defy the storms,
and give pleasure to the eye. Farther on, the roughness of the coast
vanished for a few hundred yards to make place for a yellow sandy beach
where was stretched a long seine. Opposite that piece of strand, and
close by our cutter's course stood a small stony island, bearing a
single invalid old pine, from whose topmost branch a great bald eagle
rose and hovered over our craft. Then the shore grew again like an
impregnable fortification, and made out to a sharp cape, on the point of
which stood a lonely, snow-white lighthouse.

"There, boys, we must go about now," said the Captain, as we neared the
cape. "But see how the wind has fallen. If it holds on in this way we
shan't have enough to take us home before night. Let's see what o'clock
it is. That lighthouse is seventeen miles from the point of our own
cape."

The Captain fumbled away at his waist-band--encircling a rotundity like
that described of Saint Nicholas--and pulled out his immense gold
turnip.

"Columbus' compass! Twenty minutes to five! Come, Walter, haul in the
mainsheet, and come up to the wind. Are you ready to go about? Well,
down with the helm then. I'll