smooth-bore
army musket and ammunition (for shooting ducks on the tidal lagoons),
tea, sugar, as much bread as we could carry, and a tomahawk. As for
tents, such luxuries were unknown to us boys in those days; if it showed
signs of rain at night time we could soon put up a bark shelter, and,
with a pair of light blankets under us, sleep in peace.

One of our most favoured spots was at Tacking Point, a curious steep-to
bluff, clothed on its sides with a dense thicket scrub, the haunt of
hundreds of black wallabies and wonga pigeons, and also a large variety,
of brown and black snakes, with an occasional death adder. The summit,
however, was beautifully grassed, and clear of timber, except for a
clump or two of gnarled and knotted honeysuckle trees; and here, after
our day's fishing, we would camp, and, lying beside our fire, look out
upon the starlit Pacific two hundred feet below. Although only five
miles from the little town, we scarcely saw a human being during our
many trips. Sometimes, however, some of 'Tommy's' sooty relatives would
follow us up, in order to gorge themselves on fish and game, which we
shared with them cheerfully.

My first groper was an exciting experience. Descending to the rocky
shore very early in the morning with 'Tommy,' we clambered over some
huge jagged and wildly-jungled-together boulders at the foot of the
bluff, and reached the edge of a large, deep pool of blue water in the
rocks, with a narrow opening to the sea. The sides were covered with
long streaming kelp and many-coloured seaweed, which moved gently up and
down to the rise and fall of the ocean swell. Only in one part could we
see the white sand at the bottom of the pool, for the depth of water was
some six or seven fathoms. Both blue and brown groper are very fond of
crabs; in fact, when a big, wary fellow will not look at either a piece
of octopus or the flesh of the _aliotis_ shell, he cannot resist a crab.
We soon secured plenty of crabs of all sizes and colours, and, baiting
our lines with two of the largest, dismembered the others, and
flung portions of them into the pool. A number of small parrot-fish,
sea-bream, and mottled cod at once appeared and devoured the fragments.
The size and hardness of the shells of our crabs, however, were too much
for them, and although they snapped off a leg or two and 'worried'
the baits considerably, our hooks touched bottom safely (we were using
sinkers of stone). Suddenly, just as my co