d about among the legs of the table and chairs,
on the lookout to steal. Using the gentle violence that cats love from
those they trust, Uncle Jake flung them one by one to the other side of
the room. They returned, purring, to snatch at the none too fresh berry
[eggs] of spider-crab with which the nets were being baited.

The shallow small-meshed setting-nets are about two feet in diameter at
the top. Stretched taut from side to side of the rim are two doubled
strings or _thirts_--which cross at right angles directly above the
centre of the net, and into which, near the middle, the four pieces of
bait are ingeniously and simply fixed by little sliders on the thirts
themselves. The whole apparatus hangs level from a yard or more of
stout line, at the upper end of which is a small stick, a stumpy
fishing rod, so to speak, often painted white so that it may be easily
found as it lies on the dark rocks. Uncle Jake's net-sticks, however,
are anything but white. Capable almost of finding them with his eyes
shut, he would sooner lose his nets altogether than let whitened sticks
point out to other people the pools which he alone knows.

We put the nets into a couple of sacks and shouldered them. A long
light pole was placed into my hand. "Don't yu never leave your pole
behind. Yu'll want it, sure 'nuff, afore this night's over."

So we set out. One by one the cats who were following, left us to go
back home. We did not walk towards the sea. On the contrary we went
inland, through some roads with demure sleeping villas on either side.
"If they bloody poachers," Uncle Jake explained, "see'd us going
straight towards the sea, they'd follow. _I_ knows 'em! They takes away
the livelihood o' the likes o' us an' sells it. Sells it--an' says 'tis
sport! I leads 'em a dance sometimes. I goes along a narrow ledge
that's jest under water, wi' ten or twelve feet depth on either side.
On they comes a'ter me. 'Uncle Jake knows where to go,' they says. And
in _they_ goes--not knowing the place like I du--head over heels an' a
swim for it! O Lor'! they don' like it when I tells 'em they better go
home an' tumble into dry clothes. Yu shude hear the language they spits
out o' their mouths 'long wi' the salt water. Horrible, tu be sure!"

[Sidenote: _SETTING-NETS_]

Broken Rocks, a playground for children by day, look wild and strange
on a night when clouds are driving across the moon, when the cliffs
fade into darkness high above the beach,