good deal on who he is. Then, if
he eats the shells, he can't take in so many."

"Eat de shells? Yah, yah, yah! Dat beats my mudder! She's allers
a-sayin' wot a waste de shells make," laughed Dick. "I jest wish we
might ketch some fish. I dasn't kerry home no crabs."

"It does look as if we'd got as many as we'd know what to do with,"
remarked Dab, as he looked down on the sprawling multitude in the bottom
of the boat. "We'll turn the clams out of the basket and fill that; but
we mustn't put any crabs in the fish-car. We'll stow 'em forward."

The basket held more than half a bushel, but there was a "heap" of what
Ford Foster called "the crusties" to pen up in the bow of the boat.

That duty attended to, and Dick was set at the oars, while Dab selected
from Ford's box just the very hooks and lines their owner had made least
account of.

"What'll we catch, Dab?"

"Most anything. Nobody knows till he's done it. Perch, porgies, cunners,
black-fish, weak-fish, may be a bass or a sheep's-head, but more cunners
than anything else, except we strike some flounders at the turn of the
tide."

"That's a big enough assortment to set up a fish-market on."

"If we catch 'em. We've got a good enough day, anyhow, and the tide'll
be about right by the time we get to work."

"Why not try here?"

"'Cause there's no fish to speak of, and because the crabs'll clean your
hook for you as fast as you can put the bait on. We must go out to
deeper water and better bottom. Dick knows just where to go. You might
hang your line out all day and not get a bite, if you didn't strike the
right spot."

Ford made no answer, for it was beginning to dawn upon him that he could
teach the "long-shore boys," black or white, very little about fishing.
He even allowed Dab to pick out a line for him and put on the hook and
sinker, and Dick Lee showed him how to fix his bait, "So de fust cunner
dat rubs agin it wont knock it off. Dem's awful mean fish. Good for
nuffin but steal bait."

A merry party they were, and the salt water was rapidly drying from the
garments of the colored oarsman, as he pulled strongly and skillfully
out into the bay and around toward a deep cove to the north of the inlet
mouth.

Then, indeed, for the first time in his life, Ford Foster learned what
it was to catch fish.

Not but what he had spent many an hour, and even day, in and about other
waters: but he had never had two such born fishermen at his elbow to
take him