n one round of the prawn-nets 'fore
they bloody men from the west'ard came up hereabout wi' their pots. Ah,
shrimpin' ain't what 't used to be!"

We made three more rounds in that bay, then hauled all our nets into
the boat, rowed further west, and shot our nets round a submarine
ledge, the whereabouts of which Uncle Jake knew to a yard. A couple of
rounds there, and we brought up to the buoy of a lobster pot (for the
ebb tide, washing round the headland, kept on hurtling us out to sea),
had our supper, and waited. Prawns take longer to go into the nets
after a second round in the same water.

A haziness that had been in the sky, strengthened into a lurry of
little cloudlets between us and the stars. "That's where 'tis going to
be," said Uncle Jake. "Easterly! Do 'ee feel this bit of a swell? Us
won't be here to-morrow night.--There! Did 'ee hear that? Eh?"

Two waves gave forth a peculiar confidential chuckle, long drawn out
and very gentle, very fatigued--as if the sea were making some signal
to us; as if it wished to say that it was tired of ebbing and flowing.
The cliff shadow listened, I thought, immovable and pitiless, but I
fancy that I heard the cry of a bird a quarter of a mile to the
eastward. Sea life wakes up with the flow of the tide. I had forgotten
the gulls and the ravens; had forgotten the existence of all living
things except prawns, lobsters and wild-crabs. No more waves
chuckled.... "That's the low tide waves sure 'nuff--thic chuckle.
There's mostly three on 'em. An' I can al'ays hear the rattle of the
high tide waves tu--iss, even in a gale o' wind. What a rattle they
makes on the beach, to be sure! They fules o' visitors 'ould laugh at
'ee if yu was to tell 'em that--they've a-laughed at me--but 'tis true.
Yu've heard, an't 'ee?"

The end buoy was troublesome to find. And in the middle of the round, I
rowed up to a shadow thinking to find a buoy, and there close beside
the boat, revealed as the swell sank, was a reef of rock, humped and
covered with seaweed which stood up on end as the water flowed
shallowly over the ledge. It was like a grisly great head, ages old,
immense, and of terrible aspect, heaving itself up through the sea at
us.

[Sidenote: _UNCLE JAKE'S MATES_]

With much careful working of the boat, we picked up the middle buoys
from the ledge, and hove them further to sea. Uncle Jake swore at the
reef, at the nets, at himself, at his luck. "_'Tis_ a bloody crib!
Didn't think th