250 WITHIN AN HOUR OF LONDON TOWN. 



and fishing instincts. No matter how young they 

 may be, they are on the paddle for fish or on the 

 look-out for fowl. These two subjects, when I 

 formed one of the community, were all folks had 

 to talk about. No wonder the boys entered fully 

 into them. When we little fellows bathed or 

 paddled, it was if big lads from thirteen to fifteen 

 were not with us usually in one of the gullies that 

 ran from the creek, up the saltings to the sluices 

 in the sea-wall. Directly the tide turned, some 

 of us would be sure to slip down and peep round 

 the mouth to see if fowl were feeding. On one 

 well-remembered afternoon a lad that was with us 

 whose age was fourteen, which circumstance caused 

 him to be looked up to by the younger fry, together 

 with the fact that he had killed a gull with his 

 father's duck-gun, came wading up from the mouth 

 of the gully and quietly told us that he should just 

 like to see some one on the wall with a gun. As 

 he craned his neck to look up, to his great delight 

 a shooter did appear there. Crawling out as quietly 

 as a dyke-eel, the lad beckoned to the gunner. 

 Then he slipped into the water again, about three 

 feet deep in the middle of the gully. Cautiously the 



