ilway station. And there were always full or part
cargoes to be had at Boston for certain single consignees along the
Cape, which would pay a fair profit on the upkeep of the schooner.
Medford Latham had lost almost all his fortune before he died so
unhappily, leaving only the homestead and small farm to his son. The
son, Captain Randall Latham, had lost the ship _Ada May_ and every
cent he possessed. Tunis had only his great uncle's legacy to begin
on, and he had waited for that until he was thirty.

In the morning the young man arose early, for the tide was then low,
and started forth with basket and clam hoe on his arm. Aunt Lucretia
had promised him, by a smiling nod, a mess of fritters for dinner if
he would supply the necessary clams. Alongshore the soft clam is the
only clam used for fritters; the tough, long-keeping quahog is
shipped to the less-enlightened "city trade."

It was not yet sunrise, but as Tunis walked down through one of
those cuts in the edge of the headland, following a well-defined
cart track, he saw the rose-glow of the sun's round face staining
the mist on the eastern horizon.

He came down upon the hard sand of the beach and walked toward a
tiny cove into which the mud flats extended and on which he knew the
clams were plentiful and ripe. Glistening pools of black water,
showing where other diggers had raided the flat, were interspersed
with trembling patches of black sand. When Tunis began to cross the
flat the sand before his boots became alive with tiny, shooting
geysers of clean water. He set to work.

And while he was thus engaged he heard suddenly a shrill outcry and
a most mysterious sound up in one of the gullies toward the summit
of Wreckers' Head. Here thousands of tons of sand had run out of the
cut in the steep bank and formed a dykelike way to the beach itself.
More and more sand was slipping down this way all the time. A strong
man could scarcely make his way up the incline, the sand was so
unstable.

Tunis stood and stared up the slope. There shot into view, carried
rapidly upon the forefront of the avalanche, a white-haired old man
who waved a stick in one hand and a cocked pistol in the other,
while from his mouth came shrill cries of excitement, if not of
alarm.

But it was what followed Cap'n Ira Ball--whom Tunis immediately
recognized--that caused the captain of the _Seamew_ such utter
surprise. Sitting on her rump, pawing at the sliding sand with her
front hoofs,