192 WILD LIFE ON A NORFOLK ESTUARY 



whose lines are continually denuded of baits. Quite common 

 sounds in the gloom of a Breydon night are the thud and 

 scrunch when some irate eel-babber, fishing in silence, 

 smashes a crab on the deck of his punt ; sometimes you 

 may hear a muttered curse against these despoilers of his 

 worms. There must be countless thousands of them sham- 

 bling about on the flats when the tide is in, or scuttling 

 about, chasing each other, or searching for prey, in the 

 channels and drains ; the trawler for bait brings up his net 

 with pecks of them kicking, jostling, threatening, biting 

 everything within their reach ; the smelter draws in numbers 

 at each haul sometimes quite a half-peck of them ! And 

 the babber only too well knows the slow, steady pull at his 

 bunch of worms ; so different from the quick, electrical 

 " pluck-pluck " of the eels, that succeed in getting " a bite in " 

 before the smell of the bait has guided the crustacean to its 

 goal. As your houseboat begins to lift herself out of her 

 muddy hollow, on the incoming tide, you can hear the long 

 scratching rasp of crabs, waking up to hunt upon the flood, 

 as they scamper one after the other in queer procession under 

 her planks. 



That the crab follows up and discovers food more by scent 

 than by sight I am convinced. I had thrown out some 

 herring-milts and the heads of some bloaters ; these fell into 

 about four or five inches of water. In a few moments several 

 crabs that had been lying in hiding were observed hurrying 

 up, without their usual cautious manceuvrings, against the 

 tide, endeavouring to outstrip each other in their race for the 

 coveted prizes. Now and then one would stop, like a hound 

 losing the scent, and recovering it, as the moving water 

 brought the " aroma " within its reach again, it would shuffle 

 along, to stop a moment to threaten with outstretched pincer- 

 claws an equally eager rival. I must admit there was some 

 loathsomeness in the way the fragments were seized upon 

 and dragged away into hiding behind the dark, rough fucus, 

 that hung in festoons from the wooden stumps protecting 

 my rond-edge. 



One August afternoon a smelter brought me a mess of 

 eels and smelts, the majority of which I cleaned for the 

 evening meal. A few of the smallest ones, with several 

 undersized flounders, I threw into the shallow water near 



