CHAPTER XV A NEW LIGHT
Even a cursory examination of the bulletin told Alec he was right in thinking that the little pamphlet held the secrets for which he had been searching. Here, in this unconsidered little publication that had been consigned to the oblivion of a dusty pigeonhole by a man who was beginning to fall behind the times, was an open sesame to the treasure-house of the deep. Alec wondered how many more of these bulletins were likewise resting in dusty pigeonholes. He was sure there must be many of them similarly tucked out of sight, for the bulletin, which was the very first of a series planned by the state to set forth the knowledge of the oyster that had been accumulated by the scientists of the world, plainly said that the position of the oyster-planter of to-day was very similar to that of the land farmer of fifty years ago, before the application of scientific methods to agriculture. If that were true, Alec knew that little heed would be given to the publication by many of the oyster-planters. They were too old to change. The situation gave him the opportunity to become a pioneer and, he firmly believed, to reap the rewards of the pioneer.
The quality that distinguished Alec's mind from the mind of the average lad of his years was that of understanding or comprehension. At school he had never won unusual grades; yet he had been an unusual student. Indeed, it would have been remarkable had a lad of his wide interests gained high marks. His participation in athletics, his accomplishments with the wireless, his devotion to nature and out-of-door pleasures, and his efforts along many lines not directly connected with his studies, practically precluded the possibility of his being an honor student. Yet no winner of high grades ever understood what he studied better than Alec comprehended the work he covered. Very early Alec had imbibed the idea that the purpose of schooling is understanding, not grades, ability to accomplish, and not diplomas. So he had been more or less indifferent to the marks he received, but very particular to grasp what he studied. To an unusual degree he had gained the essence of education, which is the ability to think. He saw facts as they were, he drew correct deductions from these facts, and he consequently came to truthful conclusions.
Nothing whatever could have meant as much to Alec, situated as he now was, as did this double ability to understand facts and to draw right conclusions from them. He was just starting his life-work. He was building his career. He was erecting a structure to last a lifetime and perhaps many generations longer. He must fight for all he got. There would be few who cared whether he built well or poorly, and fewer still to help him. His alone was the responsibility for the quality of the job he was doing. What he had told Captain Rumford was true: he wanted to know, not only about what oyster-planters had done and were doing, but also what they would be doing in future. Alec had always been like that. He had always wanted to know the whole truth.
As he read the bulletin in his hands, he told himself that he was a fortunate lad, indeed. If oyster-farming is to-day just where land farming was half a century ago, he told himself, he had become an oysterman at exactly the right moment. He had had a great deal more schooling than most of the men now in the business. He could learn the truth more easily. He had the advantage of knowing nothing whatever about the oyster business, so that he had no prejudices to hamper him, no preconceived ideas to hold him back. He was free to learn the truth, and when he found it, to act accordingly. He could make all his plans upon a scientific basis. He could be a pioneer in scientific oyster-culture. And like the farmers who sprayed their fruit-trees while their neighbors laughed at them, and the dairymen who began raising blooded stock while their neighbors ridiculed them, he would reap his reward, the same as those intelligent orchardists and cattlemen had done.
Perhaps Alec did not actually think the situation out in such detail, but the underlying idea he felt very strongly. He had come into the oyster business at a time when it was about to undergo a change. Not all the oyster-shippers, he felt sure, would toss aside this valuable compendium of information as thoughtlessly as Captain Rumford had done. Few of them, perhaps, were as well qualified as he himself was to carry out the suggestions made in the book; for he had studied biology. He knew how to use the microscope. He was familiar with the work that would be required of the scientific oysterman as suggested by the bulletin.
For this marvelous little publication told him, not only about the life-history and habits of oysters, but also how and where they could best be raised. An open sesame, indeed, was this book. For Alec had long understood that the present method of oyster-culture was largely a game of blind man's buff.
When he had asked the skipper how the oystermen knew good grounds from poor ones, the captain had replied, "They don't. All they can do is to shell 'em and see if they get a set."
That was the doctrine and belief of an experienced and able captain of an oyster-boat. Yet here in his very hands Alec had proof that an intelligent person could discover where the good grounds were, easily and cheaply. It wasn't necessary to own a ship and buy thousands of bushels of shells and employ expensive help to spread them in order to find out whether a given place would make good grounds or not. With very little equipment Alec knew he could test the matter as well as anybody. He almost cried aloud with sheer joy. For though the planted beds covered 30,000 acres, and doubtless included many and perhaps most of the good grounds, Alec did not doubt that there still remained unstaked areas that would make as good oyster-beds as any already "stuck up." His job was to find them while he was getting together the money to buy his equipment.
When Alec had gone hastily through the bulletin once, he again began to read it, this time slowly and painstakingly. He found that Skipper Bagley's assertion that one oyster produces millions of little oysters was not only true, but was almost an understatement, so incredible was the actual number, estimated by the scientists at sixteen to sixty millions, depending upon the size, age, and vigor of the spawning oyster. And it was equally true, as the skipper had said, that one could not see newly-formed oysters with the naked eye; for, even at two weeks of age, when they are about ready to attach to something, they were still scarcely visible.
What fairly astounded Alec was the fact that each tiny oyster larva has a foot, which is later absorbed into the body when there is no longer need for it. For, contrary to what the skipper had told him, the oyster fry not only have the power to move about in the water, but they do not die at once if they sink to the bottom and find no suitable place of attachment. With its tiny foot, each microscopic oyster is able to move about on the bottom, and does move about, a few inches at a time, seeking a place of attachment. It has other methods of locomotion as well. Hair-like growths that act like propellers, give it the power to move slowly through the waters. Thus it creeps and swims, searching here and there until it finds the resting-place it is after. Then it makes fast to the place selected, and its shell rapidly enlarges. In ten hours' time it has become as large as a grain of pepper.
And the bulletin's suggestions as to shelling oyster-beds, Alec noted, were directly at variance with established practices. For Alec knew that ordinarily the shells were spread broadcast, in an effort to cover as much of the bottom as possible, whereas the bulletin advised the planting of shells in windrows, placed transversely to the current, and piled to the depth of ten inches or even a foot, so as to afford more exposed surfaces than could be offered by shells broadcasted and lying flat in the mud. For now Alec learned, to his astonishment, that the tiny oysters do not necessarily drop downward in their search for a place of attachment, but also rise upward. And since sediment does not collect to any great extent on the under surface of bodies held in the water, the under sides will afford the cleaner places of attachment. In proof of this, the bulletin showed several shells that had been suspended in the water for five days during the spawning season. Though they were clean when put into the water, enough sediment had collected in that short time to prevent the attachment of a single spat to their upper surfaces, while one shell alone had seventy-three spats attached to its under surface at the end of five days.
"Why, that's just common-sense," cried Alec. "Of course an under surface stays cleaner in the water than an upper surface. Anybody knows that. And shells heaped in windrows will present a thousand times as many under surfaces as shells thrown flat in the mud. You bet I won't forget that."
There were many other things that astonished Alec. He learned that spawning activities are controlled almost wholly by temperature, oysters never spawning before the water reaches a temperature of at least 68 degrees and generally 70 degrees, while spawning activity increases with the increase in the temperature of the water. Alec saw at once that there might thus be great seasonal variation in the amount of spawn produced, and that a cold, cloudy summer might result in little or no oyster fry being spawned, while a hot, cloudless spring and summer, particularly if the wind did not stir up the water too much, would almost certainly result in a tremendous output of oyster larvæ.
"Looks to me," said Alec, with characteristic insight, "as though it wasn't worth going to the expense of shelling a bed if it happens to be a very cold year," and he was pleased when in reading further he found that the bulletin confirmed his judgment.
Furthermore Alec knew that deep water would remain cold while shallow water grew warm. And as the oyster remains practically at the temperature of the water surrounding it, he saw that here was another problem to be considered in the greatest of all the problems that he believed lay before him. That was the problem of finding a good oyster ground. For Alec had no hope of ever being able to buy a ground already established. Within a very few days such an established bed had changed hands, and the price paid by the purchaser was $25,000. Of course this was a big bed, but Alec knew that any productive bed at all would command a high price. What he must do when he became a planter was to stake out new grounds that he could get from the state merely for the annual rental of seventy-five cents an acre.
To procure such a bed was a simple enough matter, but to procure a bed that would be productive, where the planting of shells would result in a good set of spat, was quite another matter. As the skipper had told him, it was commonly believed that all the good beds had already been "stuck up." That fact had been the most discouraging thing Alec had had to face, as he thought over his plans for the future. But now light was coming to him. One of the factors he must consider in the selection of his grounds was water temperature. Depth was an important factor, and so, too, was the movement of the water, for turbulent water meant cold water, while still water meant warm water.
When Alec studied that portion of his book that dealt with tides and currents, he fairly hugged himself for joy. Now he knew how to determine the other factors in the problem of locating his beds. For the bulletin told him that with the ebb and flow of the tide certain main currents are produced over an oyster-bed which are quite definite in direction and which vary but little from year to year, while the configuration of the shore and the bottom produces smaller currents and eddies in conjunction with these main currents. And these currents would have very much to do with the matter of locating an oyster-bed.
For an abrupt ridge, or raised area of the bottom, will produce one or more eddies, thus resulting in a region of slack water. Along the margin of every well defined channel, areas occur where the water lags behind that in the channel itself. And these areas are often so sharply marked off that one may follow them without difficulty for miles, owing to the appearance of the water. "Any one who has noticed these 'slicks,'" said the bulletin, "has noticed the foam and surface debris which collect there."
Many a time had Alec noted these slick stretches of water and wondered at them, seeking a reason for their smoothness. Here it was explained. But the full connection between a slick and an oyster-bed below it was not apparent to Alec until he read, "The oyster larvæ, though free-swimming, move so slowly that they are carried about by the currents much as grains of sand would be. They, therefore, tend to collect in these regions of slicks and eddies, along with a host of other microscopic plants and animals. In such places there occurs a heavier set of spat than elsewhere in that neighborhood. Find the oyster larvæ in the water, then get your shells under them."
There was the secret Alec had been searching for. Now he knew how to go about the selection of his oyster grounds. "Find the oyster larvæ in the water and get your shells under them."
One difficulty alone seemed to present itself. As a deck-hand he would be busy until the end of June, and by that time he feared spawning might be nearly ended. How could he do his duty to his employer and at the same time study the waters in the oyster-beds as he saw he would need to do? But he was reassured as he read further and found that in the Delaware Bay and other deep waters in New Jersey, spawning is a more or less continuous process, running from the first of July to the latter part of August.
Not even on that first morning at Bivalve, when he suddenly found his condition changed from that of a shivering, hungry, penniless lad, to a situation where he had a warm place to sleep, plenty of good food to eat, and a generous wage coming to him daily, did Alec feel more elated than he felt now. He had had a very rough experience. He had gone through an unforeseen crisis, when all the supports had been knocked from under his young life and he had suddenly had to stand wholly on his own feet. At first he had had to choose what he would do merely to exist. Later he had had to decide what he meant to make of himself. Even when chance had put him on shipboard, and circumstances had almost seemed to drive him to choose oystering as his calling, the situation had seemed hopelessly difficult, so much of both knowledge and capital were necessary, and both seemed so hard to acquire. And now, here in his very hand, he suddenly found the map that showed him his path clear and distinct.
No wonder he cried aloud for joy. Now he knew, not only where he was going, but also how to get there. To be sure, it would take him years to attain his goal. But that would have been true, no matter what he attempted. There was nothing discouraging about that. There was nothing discouraging about any aspect of his situation. He had a steady job and was saving money, even though half his wages went to support his partner in the shell business. The shell venture was certain to net him a generous return. With his father's gravestone paid for, Alec had practically no expenses, save for clothes and incidentals, and these were small enough. He had no time for nightly diversion at some neighboring town, even had he desired it, and he used neither tobacco nor strong drink. The clothes he had worn upon his arrival were of good cut and material. He had had them cleaned and pressed when he got rougher garments for his daily labor, and these good clothes would last for a long time. So he could save a goodly sum each week even on half of his wages. If he continued to work hard and take advantage of every opportunity that offered, he knew his income was certain to increase and his savings multiply accordingly. No wonder Alec felt jubilant. No wonder he felt as though he were already standing at the wheel of Old Honesty, the ship of his dreams. No wonder, either, that he could not discern the rocks that rose ahead with evil portent.