MEN AND MANNERS 49 



the fleet he had been through the Russian war. He was a 

 decent fellow until his mind went wrong, and they had to 

 take his guns from him and " put him away." He was the 

 neatest man at laying at fowl you ever saw : he would lay so 

 close you could not discern anything of him above the 

 gunwale as he sculled on to fowl. He once shot a sheld- 

 duck, and left it in his (Thacker's) houseboat, just while he 

 did a bit of eel-picking on the flat. When he went to the 

 boat to fetch the duck, out it flew ! It had recovered from 

 the shot, which had only stunned it. 1 



Breydon isn't what it was forty years ago. There was 

 plenty of water then ; why, a wherry could make a board 

 from where the railway bridge now is to Rotten Eye, another 

 higher up at Lamb's Rond, and two more higher up, and find 

 itself at Burgh. There had not been a wherry across Brey- 

 don, except up Duffell's drain, this twenty years. At Rotten 

 Eye (now dry a long time before low water) there were four 

 and a half feet of water at dead low water thirty-five years 

 ago. And when the wind blew hard from the south-east 

 straight from Holland we got plenty of brents, hard fowl 

 (scaups, golden eyes, tufted duck, etc.), and Dutch fowl, a 

 smaller and darker mallard than our own. There was a big 

 reed-bed all along from Lamb's Rond to Rotten Eye, for the 

 water was more constantly fresh, before the present salt 

 rushes were let in by a deepened harbour; and the punt- 

 gunners used to draw into the reeds and quite hide them- 

 selves. There were from twenty to twenty-five big guns ; 

 and each man took his station, and kept to it. There was no 

 rushing out to get the " best " of another boat ; if the fowl 

 left one man's " bit," then, of course, there was nothing to 

 say against it. But woe betide any one who left his place to 

 " best " another ; he was likely enough to get a shot at his 

 boat ! Thacker had seen twenty-five boats after eels pick- 

 ing, in Rotten Eye, at one time. 



I asked him about " pokers " (pochards) and this strange 

 weed they loved so. 



Thacker called it " poker-grass " tangle, that had a small 

 pea grow on it near the roots Rotten Eye was full of it. 

 These peas the pochards fed on after pulling up the weed by 



1 Refer to Nature in Eastern Norfolk, p. 39, wherein a similar incident is 

 narrated of a hobby. 



