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"It's dreadful, isn't it?" said Miss Jelliffe as we passed by the fishhouses. "I know that when I get back home I shall never eat another fish-cake. And just look at the awful swarms of flies and blue-bottles. And the smell of it all! It is all undoubtedly picturesque, but it is unspeakably smelly."

Then I would watch the man's hurried breathing and feverish pulse. But I could not remain with idle hands very long at a time, and frequently strolled out to breathe the sea-scented air, in some place well to windward of the poor little fishhouses that reeked infamously with the scattered offal of cod.

Crowded under the cliff are the bits of fishhouses, built, like the cottages above, all of shingles all gray with the passing years, for Quantuck history stretches back far into the long-ago, when, Town seven miles away, was a prosperous whaling port. But though the summer visitors come in schools like the bluefish, the little gray village on the cliff is unchanging and unchanged.

Along the white sand of the beach, now garlanded with lines of fresh seaweed torn up and washed ashore by the gale, were scattered a half dozen fishhouses, with dories and lobster pots before them, and at the rear of these began the gray and white huddle of houses and stores, with two white church spires and the belfry of the schoolhouse rising above their roofs.

It was like awaking from the unrest of a nightmare to the peace of one's bed. We glided on, losing headway, for Frenchy had let the sheets run. With movements apparently slow, yet with the deftness which brings quick results, the sails were gathered about the masts and made fast, and presently we drifted against the small forest of poles supporting the flakes and fishhouses.