ere of a sort of limestone or grit, and they were
rugged and rounded at the corner, and lumpy, but the slaty rocks were
generally flat-sided, and split off regularly, forming smooth flat forms
that often rose one above another in rough steps, so that you could
easily climb to the tops, or, where they had fallen and split away from
the cliff, and lay resting against one another, you could walk under
what seemed to be like great stone lean-to sheds, whose floors were as
often as not water as pure and clear as crystal.

It was a wonderful place, and never ceased to attract us, for there was
always something to find when the tide had gone down leaving the rocks
bare.

All the things that lived or grew upon them had been seen by us hundreds
of times, but after some months at school they always seemed new again,
and we got our little pawn nets and baskets, and went prawning with as
great zest as ever.

There are plenty of ways to go prawning, I daresay, but I'll tell you
how we managed. We each used to have a small ring net, fixed at the end
of a six-foot stick that answered two or three purposes, and, with our
little baskets slung at our backs, set off along the shore.

I remember one morning very well. It was about three weeks after
finding the lead vein that Bob Chowne and Bigley came over to the Bay,
and we started, our Sam saying that it was going to be a very low tide.

Off we went down by the little waterfall which came along by the back of
our house, and down to the beach, getting as close to the sea as the
rocks would let us, and looking out for the first pool where the sea had
left a few prisoners.

We were not long in seeing one, and then the thing was to approach as
quietly as possible and look in.

These pools were generally fringed with sea-weed, great greenish-brown
fronds in one place, dark streaks of laver in another, and lower down
the bottom would be all pink with the fine corallite, while all about
the sea-anemones would dot every crack and hole, like round knobs of
dark red jelly, where the water had left them high and dry, spread out
like painted daisy flowers, where they were down in the pool.

No matter how cautiously we approached, something would take fright.
Perhaps it would be a little shore crab that betrayed itself by
scuffling down amongst the corallite or sea-weed, perhaps a little
fierce-looking bristly fish, which shot under a ledge of the rock all
amongst the limpets, acorn barnac