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The water was perfectly smooth; but the boat was full in an instant, and nearly a bushel of freshly-caught and ill-tempered crabs were manoeuvring in all directions around the woolly head, which was all their late captor could now keep in sight. "Up with the grapnel, Ford," shouted Dab. "Take an oar: we'll both row. He can swim like a duck, but he might split his throat."

There was fun in the loading of that basket: but even the boys from Long Island were astonished at the number and size of the fine, freshly-caught blue-fish, to which they were treating the hungry passengers of the "Prudhomme;" and the basket had to go and come again and again. The steamer's steward, on his part, avowed that he had never before met so honest a lot of Yankee fishermen.

But the fact was that the herring were generally contracted for by the agents of the salesmen, and shipped directly for Glasgow, so that they were but rarely retailed in Erisaig itself; moreover, people accustomed to herring their whole life through preferred variety a freshly-caught mackerel, or flounder, or what not.

On the previous evening the conversation that had gone on between the doctor and the Count had hardly ended before the Spaniard's boat, rowed by a couple of men, came as near as they could get to the brig, and one of the bare-legged men, after giving a sharp look round into the shallow water, as if in search of danger from one of the hideous reptiles on the look-out for prey, stepped over into the mud, and came up, bearing a basket of large, freshly-caught fish, which he placed in the hands of a couple of the sailors, and then stood waiting.

He did not look as if he would, but there was plenty of the spirit of determination in him, and he plodded on till they came in sight of the grove where the huts had been set up, and there in the first beams of the morning sun the ladies could be seen anxiously on the look-out for the lost ones, while, to mingle matter-of-fact with sentiment, there, from among the rocks rose up in the glorious morning the thin blue smoke of the so-called kitchen fire, telling of what was to follow after the welcome to wit, a good breakfast of fruit and freshly-caught fish, with other delicacies, perhaps, by way of a surprise.

Flocks of goats are driven from house to house to be milked at the doorstep, and occasionally a hill-man may be seen wandering about in the hope of finding a purchaser for the freshly-caught leopard he is leading. What will, perhaps, most strike Europeans are the bullock gharries by which the heavy traffic of the town is carried on.

The only symptom of a prison about the place was a door, across which a couple of sentinels were stretched, yawning; while within lay three freshly-caught pirates chained by the leg.

On the larger of the two islets were a few thatched huts with open sides. One of these was reserved for the missionary and the white man, and hauling our canoe up on the beach at the invitation of the people, we sat down under a shed whilst the women grilled us some of the freshly-caught fish. This took barely over ten minutes, as fires had already been lighted by the children.

We quit Kivira early, and paddling S. 25o W., make the famous fish-market in the little island Kabizia, just in time to breakfast on a freshly-caught fish, the celebrated Singa, a large, ugly, black-backed monster, with white belly, small fins, and long barbs, but no scales.

The cook was busied in preparing for the gridiron some freshly-caught trout, intended for the squire's own breakfast; and a kitchen-maid was toasting oatcakes, of which there was a large supply in the bread-flake depending from the ceiling.