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Updated: May 14, 2025
So they went in to watch the oyster-man fry them two hot little panfuls, and sat over the coarse little table-cloth for a long half-hour, contentedly eating and talking. Fortified, they walked home, Susan so eager to interrogate Big Mary about the children that she reached the orderly kitchen quite breathless. Not a sound out of any of them was Big Mary's satisfactory report.
"I know the form of that cross," said the oyster-man. "It is Spanish. Many a year ago, no doubt, some high-pooped galleon, running close to the coast, went ashore on Chincoteague and drifted piecemeal through the inlet, wider then than now. This mummery, this altar toy, destined for some Papist mission-house, has lain all these years in the brackish Sound. Ha! ha!
This was not all done at once, the oyster-man told me. They had lived there for years and had gradually added this and that until the place was as we saw it. He had an oyster-bed out in the river and he made cider in the winter, but where he got the apples I don't know. There was really no reason why he should not get rich in time.
In the East it is customary, I believe, for the infidel to take off his boots when he intrudes on sacred ground; nothing is said about stockings, but I had to divest myself of both boots and stockings. I waded into Doom a few minutes ago, for all the world like an oyster-man with my bag on my back." "Good God!" cried the Baron. "I forgot the tide. Could you not have whistled?"
You never so much as turn the sixteenth part of an eye in his direction, for even as the oyster-man, should the poor mollusc heave the faintest sigh, is inside with his knife in the twinkling of a star; even as a beetle has but to think of moving its tiniest leg for the bird to swoop upon him, even so will the least muscular interest in your neighbour give you bound hand and foot into his power.
After I had seriously thought over the matter, I could see no good reason against adopting this plan. It would certainly be a cheap method of living, and it would really be housekeeping. I grew more and more in favor of it. After what the oyster-man had done, what might not we do?
One afternoon we went up the river, and there we saw a sight that transfixed us, as it were. On the bank, a mile or so above the city, stood a canal-boat. I say stood, because it was so firmly imbedded in the ground by the river-side, that it would have been almost as impossible to move it as to have turned the Sphinx around. This boat we soon found was inhabited by an oyster-man and his family.
It kills hares, rabbits, and squirrels when it can catch them, and will rob a bird's nest in the most ruthless manner. It is particularly fond of shell-fish; and the unios, with which many of the fresh-water lakes and rivers of America abound, form part of its food. These it opens as adroitly with its claws as an oyster-man could with his knife.
"It can scarcely be called by that name. It was in tavern brawls; one was a rascally cockleman, and the other a rascally oyster-man." "How did you manage the oysterman with a knife, eh?" "No, sirrah; with my sword I did him open." "Have you any expectation of being hanged?" "Why, according to the life I have led, I think there is every probability that I may reach that honorable position."
The negroes made the funeral procession. The Jew walked amongst the negroes. "O Father Abraham," he said, chuckling to himself, "forgive me that I stand here, no renegade to my faith, yet the only white Christian on Chincoteague!" Issachar was oyster-man, sailor, and sutler in one. He advanced money to build pungy boats, knit nets, and make huts.
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