bout under
the trees in front of the hotel. Down between them and the bank was a
lot of men piling up a heap of round stones and crossing sticks of wood
over them till a high sort of a cross-beam pinnacle was built, to which
one of the men set fire. Mercy, how it blazed up and flashed through the
cracks in the wood! They seemed to enjoy the blaze, and worked like
beavers around it--though I don't know how a beaver works, never having
seen one.

Some of the men went down to the water, and, dragging up great armfuls
of dark green and yellow grass, swelled out here and there with bulbs
and blisters, laid it in a heap before the fire. Some of the others sat
down on the rocks, with pails of potatoes and sweet corn between their
knees, which they began to wash and tie up in their husks.

I was awful curious to know what all this was about, but made up my mind
to wait and see; for Mr. Burke seemed so anxious and busy that I didn't
want to stop him by asking questions.

When the wet weeds, potatoes, and corn came on, I thought that the next
thing would be some clam-bake; but instead of that, a fellow came down
from the house with a lot of young chickens, picked clean, which he
carried by the legs, and another loafed up from the water with three
great horrid green monsters, like crabs swelled out--green as the
sea-weed, and so dreadfully crawly that the very sight of them made me
creep all over.

"What on earth are those creatures?" says I to Dempster; "mammoth
cockroaches that have taken to a seafaring life, or what?"

"Why, lobsters," says he.

"Lobsters!" says I. "Not a bit of it. All the lobsters I have ever seen
were bright red, and still as mice."

"That was after they were cooked," says he. "Wait till these come out,
and they'll be red enough, I promise you."

Well, I waited and watched, for what these men were up to was more than
I could make out. When the wood was all burned down they brushed the
coals and ashes away with an old broom, and two colored men came up from
the shore, carrying a two-bushel basket full of little longish-round
creatures, hard as stone, and with a long black sort of a knot hanging
out of one end. They were dripping wet, and pieces of sea-weed clung to
them, as if they grew in the water like the crabs and lobsters.

Well, when the ashes were swept away, and nothing but the hot stones
were left crowded close together, the two nig--well, colored persons,
lifted that great basket between