us, we would set to work. Baiting each hook so carefully that no
part of it was left uncovered, we dug a hole in the sand, in which it
was then partly buried; then we scooped out with our hands a narrow
trench about six inches deep and thirty or forty yards in length, into
which the line was laid, covered up roughly, and the end taken to the
shore. After we had accomplished laying our lines, radiating right and
left, in this manner we covered each tempting bait with an ordinary
crockery flower-pot, weighted on the top with a stone to keep it in its
place, and then a thin tripping-line was passed through the round hole,
and secured to a wooden cross-piece underneath. These tripping-lines
were then brought ashore, and our preparations were complete.

"But why," one may ask, "all this elaborate detail, this burying of
lines, and, most absurd of all, the covering up of the baited hook with
a flowerpot?"

Simply this. As the tide flows in over the sand there come with it,
first of all, myriads of small garfish, mullet, and lively red bream,
who, if the bait were left exposed, would at once gather round and begin
to nibble and tug at it. Then perhaps a swiftly swimming "Long Tom,"
hungry and defiant, may dart upon it with his terrible teethed jaws, or
the great goggle-eyed, floundering sting-ray, as he flaps along his way,
might suck it into his toothless but bony and greedy mouth; and then
hundreds and hundreds of small silvery bream would bite, tug, and drag
out, and finally reveal the line attached, and then the scheme has come
to naught, for once the cute and lordly black bream sees a line he is
off, with a contemptuous eye and a lazy, proud sweep of tail.

When the tide was near the full flood we would take the ends of our
fishing- and tripping-lines in our hands and seat ourselves upon the
high sandstone boulders which fringed the sides of the bay, and from
whence we could command a clear view of the water below. Then, slowly
and carefully, we tripped the flower-pots covering the baits, and hauled
them in over the smooth sandy bottom, and, with the baited lines gripped
tight in the four fingers of our right hands, we watched and waited.

Generally, in such calm, transparent water, we could, to our added
delight, see the big bream come swimming along, moving haughtily through
the crowds of small fry--yellow-tail, ground mullet, and trumpeters.
Presently, as one of them caught sight of a small shining silvery mullet
(o