bumps and bruises off a rock, I must have passed Deadman's Rock, Danger
Gutter, Broken Rock and the Wreckstone. (Things of the sea nearly
always take name from their evil aspects.) Uncle Jake could have told
me at any moment exactly where I was.

At last, near the surf, I saw in front of me a flat table-rock,
standing up alone, and as I descended towards the foot of it, a high
black rocky archway became plain. Broad-leaved oarweed covered it like
giant hair, and hung drooping into the deep black pool beneath. The
moonlight glinted on the oarweed. The pool, though darkly calm, ebbed
and flowed silently with the waves outside. I recognized the place. It
was Hospital Rock--the rock the little boats strike on because it is
smooth on top and the waves do not break over it very much. I half
expected the ugly head of a great conger to look out at me from the
pool. As I lay flat on the rock to drop my nets, the rattle and roar of
the sea beyond, vibrating through the solid stone, the whistle of the
wind through the downhanging oarweed, sounded like an orchestra of the
mad damn'd.

I caught nothing there, and was not sorry. The place was too eerie to
stay in long. "Ah!" said Uncle Jake when we met again on the inner
reef, "I've knowed they amateurs run straight off home when they've
a-found theirselves under Hospital. A terr'ble place! Yu knows now. Did
'ee set your nets there? Eh?"

He took some fresh bait from his prawn bag and fixed it in the thirts
of my nets. "'Tis nearly over," he said, "but jest yu try that, an' if
they'm there that'll hae 'em. There's no bait like that there when yu
can get it, on'y nobody knows o'it."

The nature of that bait I shall not divulge, any more than I shall name
the place where Uncle Jake goes to play with the young ravens in the
spring. Somebody might catch his prawns; somebody would shoot his
ravens. We had caught about two hundred prawns between us, a few
lobsters and some wild-crabs. As we walked homewards, the three cats
came down the lane, one by one, to welcome Uncle Jake.

[Sidenote: _EAST WITH A SKIM-NET_]

Next day we sailed east in the _Moondaisy_. Uncle Jake straddled the
pools and lifted the heavy stones. Then in a skim-net,[18] with
marvellous dexterity, he caught the almost invisible prawns as they
darted away. He dragged lobsters out of holes, and cursed the
neighbouring villagers who had been down to the shore after crabs and
had disturbed his favourite stones. He kn