t, was invitation enough, even if we had not been
met at the threshold by the master himself, who stretched out his great
arms with a kind, "Come-in-and-how-are-ye-all."

And what a wonderful evening we passed in that other hutch, before the
blazing hearth-fire! What stories of wrecks and rescues, of icebergs and
whales, of fogs and fisheries, of domestic lobsters that brought up their
little families, in the mouths of the sunken cannon of the French
frigates; of the great sharks that were sometimes caught in the meshes of
the set-nets! "There was one shark," said our host, another old fisherman,
who, by the way, wore a red skull-cap like a cardinal, and had a habit of
bobbing his head as he spoke, so as to put one continually in mind of a
gigantic woodpecker--"there was one shark I mind particular. My two boys
and me was hauling in the net, and soon as I felt it, says I, 'Boys,
here's something more than common.' So we all hauled away, and O my!
didn't the water boil when he come up? Such a time! Fortnatly, he come up
tail first. LORD, if he'd a come up head first he'd a bit the boat in two
at one bite! He was all hooked in, and twisted up with the net. I s'pose
he had forty hooks in him; and when he got his head above water, he was
took sick, and such a time as he had! He must a' vomited up about two
barrels of bait--true as I set here. Well, as soon as he got over that,
then he tried to get his head around to bite! LORD, if he'd got his head
round, he'd a bit the boat in two, and we had it right full of fish, for
we'd been out all day with hand-lines. He had a nose in front of his gills
just like a duck, only it was nigh upon six feet long."

"It must have been a shovel-nose shark," said Picton.

"That's what a captain of a coaster told me," replied Red-Cap; "he said it
must a been a shovel-nose. If he'd only got that shovel-nose turned
around, he'd a shovelled us into eternity, fish and all."

"What prevented him getting his head around?" said Picton.

"Why, sir, I took two half-hitches round his tail, soon as I see him come
up. And I tell ye when I make two half-hitches, they hold; ask captain
there, if I can't make hitches as will hold. What say, captain?"

Captain assented with a confirmatory nod.

"What did you do then?" said Picton. "Did you get him ashore?"

"Get him ashore?" muttered Red-Cap, covering his mouth with one broad
brown hand to muffle a contemptuous laugh; "get him ashore! why, we was
prett