ery often I would be taking one of
the men with me and a net, and taking the boat from the beach we would
go out with the splash-net, for I would be fond of the sport as well as
of the daintiness of the eating in salmon trout. In the dusk we would
be leaving, and whiles not coming in till it was two or three o'clock
in the morning.

I am thinking that maybe long ago the folk on the island would be
watching for an enemy landing from the water, for with the sea as calm
as a mill-pond and just the loom of the land--maybe through a haze--the
senses will become very alert, and any little noise without the boat a
man will be hearing, and wondering about, as well as listening to the
splash of a fish falling into the water after a gladsome leap, and the
noise of splashing of the oars to frighten the salmon-trout into the
meshes.

On an August evening we were in the little bay near the rock at the
mouth of the wee burn that passes the great granite stone on the
shore--for that is a namely place for trout. There was a bright golden
gleam as the oars dipped, and a swirl of phosphor fire at the stern
like little wandering stars, when I heard the noise of oars and the
creak of thole-pins, and I turned to look, thinking maybe some other
was at the fishing, but the boat was heading for the port at the
Point--wrack-grown now, and only to be seen at low tide.

In the bay at anchor was a schooner, a low raking black schooner, with
the gleam of her riding light reflecting a long way over the water
toward the shore--a sign of rain, we say. In a little I heard a gruff
voice in the English, for the words came to me plainly--

"Easy, starbo'd; easy, all," and then the scrunch of a keel on sand,
and after a little time I heard a boat being shoved off and the thrust
of oars, and then the same voice again--

"Give way together," and it came to me that the quick command had the
ring of a Government ship, and I was wondering if the _Gull_ was making
for her home port, for my heart somehow warmed to the _Gull_, and
McNeilage, when I would be looking at the loom of that raking black
schooner, and hearing the quick short strokes of the oars of the
row-boat with no singing or any laughter. We had a good catch of fish
when we got started to row back to the place where we beached the
little boat, and it would be the best of an hour's rowing to get there.
Little we spoke passing round the Point, except maybe to voice a wonder
that a boat should