d I'm ever so
much obliged for the opportunity."

The next morning, after having hauled the trap, Colin jumped aboard the
_Phalarope_, which was going to New Bedford for supplies for the
station, and which was to take him there to join Dr. Jimson on a
swordfish schooner. A large portion of the surface of Buzzards Bay was
dotted with billets of wood, about six inches thick and painted in all
manner of colors. Some were red, some white, some black, some yellow and
blue, some striped in all manner of gaudy hues.

"I've been wondering," said Colin, as he stood in the pilot house
chatting to the captain of the little steamer, "what all those sticks in
the water are?"

The captain took his pipe out of his mouth to stare at him in surprise,
as he turned the wheel a spoke or two.

"Don't you know that?" he said. "Those are lobster-pot buoys."

"You mean there's a lobster-pot attached to every one of those?"

"Yes, of course."

"But there are thousands of them! Why, right now, I can probably see
forty or fifty, and they're not so awfully easy to catch sight of with a
little sea running. And why are they painted all different colors?"

"Different owners," was the reply, "every man has his own color. Every
day, or every other day at least, he sails out to the grounds--some of
'em now have motor-boats--and makes a round of his pots. A chap whose
buoy is yellow has perhaps a hundred or two yellow buoys scattered about
the harbor."

"That sounds like work," said Colin.

"It's hard work," was the reply. "A lobster-pot is weighted with bricks
and it's a heavy load to pull up in a boat. It's an awkward thing to
handle, too. Then a lobsterman has to rebait his traps, and as he does
that with rotten fish, it's not a sweet job. And he can only bring in
lobsters over a certain size; anything less than nine and a half inches
in length he has to throw back. Sometimes it'll happen that the traps
are full of lobsters that are too short or too small, 'shorts' they call
'em, and his day's work won't bring him in much. There's a living in it,
but that's about all."

Finding that the captain of the _Phalarope_ knew the lobster business
well, as do most men who are natives of the region, Colin kept him busy
answering questions until they ran into New Bedford. As the old center
of the whaling industry, the harbor had a great interest for Colin, but
there was but one of the whaling ships in at the time, and the ancient
fisher-town atmosp