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Who shall say that this little upset of mine found here an oyster-bed, shook all the oysters out of their bed into space, and left their clothes high and dry in a locality which, but for those garments, would seem never to have known the oyster in his prime?
Our course, for the first seven and a half miles, lay along the canal leading to the oyster-bed, our purpose being to examine two promising- looking channels that branched out of it, and that we had already noticed and commented upon.
"Yes: I have rotated the gone-to-seed lettuce off, and expect to rotate the turnips in; it is a political fashion." "Is n't it a shame that the tomatoes are all getting ripe at once? What a lot of squashes! I wish we had an oyster-bed. Do you want me to help you any more than I am helping?" "No, I thank you." "Don't you think we could sell some strawberries next year?"
"Yes: I have rotated the gone-to-seed lettuce off, and expect to rotate the turnips in; it is a political fashion." "Is n't it a shame that the tomatoes are all getting ripe at once? What a lot of squashes! I wish we had an oyster-bed. Do you want me to help you any more than I am helping?" "No, I thank you." "Don't you think we could sell some strawberries next year?"
But by the time that we had run some four miles in this new direction we saw clearly that this channel could be of no possible service to us, for it began to shoal, and ultimately became too shallow to float the ship; therefore as, simultaneously with this discovery, we caught a strong whiff of tainted wind from our oyster-bed, some four miles to windward, we put down our helm, tacked, and retraced our steps, going back a couple of miles along the oyster-bed channel to the other channel which we desired to examine.
Accordingly, after allowing ourselves a day's rest to enable us to recover from the fatigues of our recent arduous boat duty, we once more repaired to the oyster-bed Grace Hartley preferring on this occasion to remain "at home", as she put it, rather than again face the disgusting sights and odours that had met her on the occasion of her visit.
All that afternoon I watched from my burrow in the ground the raging of the elements, and towards evening was pleased to note a general subsidence of wind and sea. The canoe was again put into the water and the thoroughfare followed southward for a mile or two, when the short day ended, leaving me beside a marshy island, which was fringed with an oyster-bed of sharp-beaked bivalves.
Here, at the absurd cost of ten cents, a gloomy, grouchy individual, who threatened to become an enemy, was made into a good friend. He became even genial, his looks were kindly, and our voices mellowed together as we talked water-front and oyster-bed gossip. "Small beer for me, Johnny," I said, when the others had ordered schooners.
"What do flatfish eat?" "Everything," was the reply, "from a clam to a codfish. But the favorite food of the halibut, for instance, is sting-ray, and consequently it is a good friend of the oysterman; where there is plenty of halibut, there will be few sting-rays, and these last are destructive to a good oyster-bed."
These rumours generally are. One of the experts of the New Zealand Fishery Department had been exploring the Haurakai Gulf, and returned to Auckland with a number of black pearls, which he had found in an oyster-bed on one of the Barrier Islands. He thought his fortune was made, though, being a fishery expert, he ought to have known better.
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