aying
his hand on one. "They--_they's watermelons_!"

"Where did you come from?" he asked, taking the nearest in his arms.
"What po' dumb idiot let you get away like this? Did you ax permission
to come here visitin' me? I'm mighty glad to see you, anyways. You's
jus' who I was a-thinkin' of."

He capered round them for a while, then gathered them all in a line
within his arm. They were too many for him, but the wrestle to keep them
from bobbing over or under and getting away was sheer delight. "Three
melons!" he repeated; "cooled in this high tide! Three of 'em! What'll
Captain Tony say?"

He was so interested in thinking of Captain Tony's surprise that the
outside melon escaped from him, and he could not get it again without
losing the other two.

"I'll come back for you," he promised; "you can't go far 'thouten your
fins grow." He took the other two and put them under a clump of
palmettoes, where they would make no new acquaintances while he was
gone. "Don't know as anybody else is up," he said; "but they might be.
It was a terrible hot night."

As he waded out again over the sharp oyster-shells the sky had grown
blue instead of gray, and a brightness sprang across the water, touching
hundreds and hundreds of glistening green watermelons undulating with
the falling tide.

Bascom's heart stood still. He stopped right where he was, and his brown
face grew tense with round-eyed wonder. The water lapped against his
breast. He almost let it take him off his feet. "I knowed they was
called watermelons," he said, slowly, "but I never caught 'em growing in
the water by night before. How's we goin' to get 'em in.'"

He looked from the melons toward the shore, where Captain Tony's long
seine hung on the poles beside the submerged pier. "Usses can haul 'em
in," he said.

Although it was exceedingly early there was no time to lose. It would
take two good hours to get the melons in, and the people on the bay
would be only too glad to help in the rescuing as soon as they woke up.
"Folkses is always so interested in what I find," Bascom grumbled; but
for once no one troubled him. He roused Captain Tony, and they hitched
the net between two boats and, rowing apart, circled around the melons
with it, gathering them in, until they were fairly rafting them before
it toward the shore. The net bulged in a great crescent, and Bascom
could hardly keep his boat abreast of the Captain's. The weight they
were towing made it seem as