When he passed the custom-house man's cottage everything was hushed and it seemed as though the occupants would make themselves invisible —they shut the doors, and stopped talking in order not to be betrayed.
With this unpleasant impression of being unwelcome, he continued his promenade out on the rock and came down to the harbor. There was a group of small huts all of the simplest construction just as though piled from pickings of stone shingles with a little smattering of mortar here and there; the chimney alone was of brick, rising above the fireplace. At one corner was a patched-up wooden addition for storage, at another only a shed of driftwood and twigs, a harbor for swine, which were shipped here during the fishing season for fattening. The windows seemed to have been taken from shipwrecks, and the roof was covered with everything that had length and width, and would absorb or shed rain—kelp, sand-oats, moss, peat, earth. These were the shelters now standing deserted, each of which housed about twenty sleepers during the big fishing season, when every hut was a kitchen bar.
Outside the most prominent shanty stood the head man of the island, fisherman Oman, scratching out a flounder net with a whip. He did not in the least consider himself beneath a fish commissioner, nevertheless he felt a pressure from this presence and bristling up, prepared to answer sharply.
"Is the fishing good?" greeted the instructor.
"Not yet, but it may be now that the government has come to do it," answered Oman impolitely.
"Where do the stromling shoals lie?" asked the commissioner, relinquishing the government to its fate.
"Oh! we thought the instructor knew better than we did, as he is paid to teach us," said Oman.
"See here, you only know where the shoals lie, but I know where the stromling are, which is a straw nearer."
"So," rallied Oman. "If we dip into the sea we shall get fish!—well one is never too old to learn."
The wife came out of the cottage and began a lively talk with her husband, so that the commissioner found it unprofitable to confer longer with the hostile fisherman, and started toward the harbor.