The King of Half-Moon Bay 



the smouldering fires of my ambition swept by the 

 kindling breezes of chance. 



I arose in the gray dawn of that summer morning. 

 Dashing the sleep from heavy eyes with the chilled 

 waters of the lake, I was soon in the boat, sans 

 breakfast, pulling for the "stumps," a large, well- 

 protected bay rank with moss, pickerel grass and wa- 

 ter weeds and fringed with falling and half -sub- 

 merged dead pines. 



Fairy mist arose from the tranquil bosom of the 

 lake and was wafted away by the slightest sugges- 

 tion of a breeze that the first peep of the coming 

 dawn had awakened. I swung the boat thirty feet 

 from the moss line and paralleled the shore, picked 

 up the light bamboo and tossed the Number 3 spoon 

 Ibis and pork rind into the weedy pockets. 



What a morning it was with the cool air, pure and 

 sweet and ladened with the dewy fragrance of the 

 verdant shores, the east all gray and mauve and 

 pierced with the pink shafts of the coming sun, the 

 blue dome of the summer sky still set with the one 

 morning star now visible but fastly waning, and the 

 gray blue of the crystal lake. What joy and exulta- 

 tion were mine! I was a king, but shorn of his 

 cares, turned loose in the land of heart's desire. 

 Again and again the bait shot out in graceful curves, 

 and with entranced eyes I followed it back. 



Look! What was that? A slight ripple where the 

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