204 With Rod and Gun in New England 



men always swear by the gulls. Of course we were too early at the beach 

 when we were down there at noon. It was the wrong time of day. Birds 

 don't begin to fly until the middle of the afternoon, and that is the reason 

 we did n't see more. These sportsmen have just hit it. They know when 

 to take them. Island gunners are hard to beat. There they go again ! 

 Another shot ! two more ! three together! Dear me ! The beach must be 

 alive with them." 



Thus I remarked, and brooded, nursing my disappointment. Wife 

 looked sympathetic, but was silent and serene. Finally I could bear no 

 more. 



"Come," I said, "let us go down to the inner shore and gather shells. 

 Spent shells are better than no ammunition at all, even if they be but sea 

 shells. I will wind my hat with weeds, forsooth, in token of my grief. 

 Doubtless more than one poor widow has donned weeds for sailors ship- 

 wrecked in yesterday's storm. Depend upon it, lives have been lost — lots 

 of 'em. There will be sad tales of disaster when the reports come in." 



Quite naturally my sympathies went out to the bereaved. Then, hand 

 in hand, we went to the landlocked beach of Katama bay, where no angry 

 sea ever disturbed its sands, all unconscious of a second storm, which was 

 so stealthily gathering for the morrow. We did not know that the deceit- 

 ful calm was what the seamen call a " weather breeder," and that we were 

 in the central eddy of a formidable cyclone which had started somewhere 

 down in the West Indies and worked its way thus far up the coast in a 

 convoluted series of littoral whirls. For our own enjoyment it was perhaps 

 as well. Heaven, they say, is elysium, even with the bottomless pit at 

 hand. 



Here beautiful marine mosses and parti-colored pebbles lined the 

 shore just where the wavelets lapped. Succulent algee clung to half-sub- 

 merged bits of wreck, long since tempest tossed, and spread their long fil- 

 aments to the rising tide. Limpets and razor clams traced their furrowed 

 trails upon the ooze which the receding waves had bared. Farther out, in 

 the channel, quahaugs and giant clams peacefully awaited the advent of 

 the tong men to lift them out of their beds of mud, with long-handled for- 

 ceps which reached to the bottom. We passed an hour in quiet abandon, 

 gathering pocketfuls of trophies which we did not want, and so lingered 

 until the whistle of the locomotive in the distance admonished us that the 

 train approached. Then we climbed up the sand bluff to the hotel veranda, 

 and while we waited for the moment of departure a sportsman drove 

 up in a buggy with a coach dog behind him. It was the identical man 

 whom we had been watching out on the moors with so much interest. His 

 face was flushed with exercise, and the sun had burned him to a red-hot 

 tan. He had a heavy ten-bore Scott gun with him, and as I approached 

 him with eager curiosity to ascertain what success he had, he at once 



