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Updated: May 4, 2025
More interesting to the wolves in these glad days than the game or the storehouse, or the piles of caplin which they cached under the sand on the shore, were the wandering herds of caribou, splendid old stags with massive antlers, and long-legged, inquisitive fawns trotting after the sleek cows, whose heads carried small pointed horns, more deadly by far than the stags' cumbersome antlers.
Caplin gave a heavy sigh. "There's a great many such strayaway folks, just as there is plants," continued Mrs. Todd, who was nothing if not botanical. "I know of just one sprig of laurel that grows over back here in a wild spot, an' I never could hear of no other on this coast. I had a large bunch brought me once from Massachusetts way, so I know it.
So they hurried on unheeding, Noel with his bow and arrows, Mooka with a little bag containing a loaf and a few dried caplin, peering under every brush pile for the shining eyes of a rabbit, and picking up one big grouse and a few ptarmigan among the bowlders of a great bare hillside.
None, I was told, was going farther than the lower coast; they did not attempt to disguise the fact that they feared to venture far into the interior. Around the wharves little boats were unloading caplin, a small fish about the size of a smelt. I was informed that these fish sold for ten cents a barrel, and were used for bait and fertiliser.
The Bank fleet pass good seamanship in silence; but a bungler is jeered all along the line. "Jest in time fer the caplin," cried the Mary Chilton. "'Salt 'most wet?" asked the King Philip. "Hey, Tom Platt! Come t' supper to-night?" said the Henry Clay; and so questions and answers flew back and forth.
This is a great time for the dogs, which feast upon them and grow fat. It is a great time also for the cod, which feed on the caplin, and for the fishermen who catch the cod. Cod follow the caplin schools, and this is the season when the fisherman, if he is so fortunate as to own a trap, reaps his greatest harvest. The trap is a net with four sides and a bottom, but no top.
The air was crisp and fragrant with whiffs of forest perfumes borne down to them from the near-by shore. Banks of brilliant red and orange in the eastern sky foretold the coming of the sun. The sea sparkled. Gulls and other wild fowl soared overhead or rode lightly upon the swell. A school of shining caplin shimmered on the surface of the water.
Our faces were running with the salt spray that swished over the bows or flew over the quarters, to stream down into the bilge at our feet, foul with fragments of squid and caplin long dead. We were also beginning to listen eagerly for other sounds than the wind hissing in the cordage, the breaking of wave-tops and the hard thumping of the blunt bows upon the seas.
Todd turned away to hide the feelings she could not instantly control. "Who was the marshal?" I hastened to ask. "Was he an old soldier?" "Don't he do well?" answered Mrs. Todd with satisfaction. "He don't often have such a chance to show off his gifts," said Mrs. Caplin, a friend from the Landing who had joined us. "That's Sant Bowden; he always takes the lead, such days.
But that winter was a bad one on the North Shore, and particularly at Dead Men's Point. It was terribly bad. The summer before, the fishing had been almost a dead failure. In June a wild storm had smashed all the salmon nets and swept most of them away. In July they could find no caplin for bait for the cod-fishing, and in August and September they could find no cod.
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