When the warm days and calm seas of May came I turned my thoughts to the sea, of which I am passionately fond, and of which one never seemed to tire, as one does of tame river water. Unfortunately my only vessel was a canoe about fourteen feet long by three feet beam, and for sea work, such as one gets round the shores of these islands, quite unfitted; but there it was, and I had simply Hobson's choice—that or none.
On a calm sea, with a tide running only one way, such as one gets on the English coast, the canoe was all very well and fairly safe; but here, through the Percée, as the channel is called between Herm and Jethou, the tide at times runs with great speed, and meeting with the resistance of the Ferriers and other huge rocks, whirls, and turns, and foams in all directions, so that a frail craft like a canoe would be a death-trap to anyone foolhardy enough to venture out in it. That being the case, I could only follow my canoeing hobby when the sea was calm, but even then did not venture far from land.
I had several narrow escapes from upsetting, and at last, whilst lying sleeplessly in bed (where, by-the-bye, most of my thinking and scheming is done), the idea of making alterations in my canoe came under my consideration, and before I went to sleep that night I had made up my mind to improve her stability in several ways. I would make her fore and aft compartments air-tight, so that if she turned turtle she would act as a life preserver, and moreover, why not add an outrigger, such as the natives of the Pacific have to theirs, making them almost impossible to upset?
The second day saw my plans an accomplished fact. I put in bulkheads fore and aft, and pitched the canoe inside and out, making her heavier, but thoroughly water-tight—the end compartments being even air-tight. I raised the combing of the well to six inches in height, put on a deeper keel, shortened my mast, and added an outrigger. What more could I do? The outrigger I made of a bundle of bamboos lashed firmly together, like the pictures one sees of the old Roman Fascines, or Rods of Authority, and this I fastened about five feet from the side by means of a couple of stout ash saplings. I found these improvements so admirable, that I was not afraid in light winds (having gained a knowledge of the tides and currents) of venturing anywhere either around Jethou or Herm.
Immense quantities of fish are found all round Jethou, the principal being lobsters, crabs, crayfish, spider crabs, plaice, John Dorey, soles, ormers, pollock, bass, gurnard, skate, cod, long-nose, rock fish, turbot, brill, whiting, and conger.
Several of the fish I had never seen before, as they are rarely if ever caught off the Norfolk coast; thus John Dorey, spiders, ormers, rock fish, and pollock were all new to me, and gave me great enjoyment in their capture, beside which I was greatly taken with the flavour of both the Dorey and pollock, scores of which I caught in the Percée.
The ormer, rarely seen in England, is, I believe, sometimes called the Sea Ear. It is somewhat the shape and size of a half cocoa nut (divided lengthwise). The outside of the shell is of a rough texture, and of a dull red colour, while the inside is beautifully coloured with an iridescent mother o' pearl coating. (Why do we never hear anything of the father o' pearl?) The ormer adheres to the rocks like the limpet tribe, but is seldom seen above low water-mark, like the limpet, who loves to be exposed to the sun and air twice a day.
The flesh of the ormer, when grilled, is something like a veal cutlet cooked in a fishy frying-pan, and I cannot say I was greatly enraptured with the uncommon univalve.
My first meeting with the ormer was by accident. I was having an al fresco lunch of bread and raw limpets which I was detaching from the rocks, eating them with a seasoning of vinegar and pepper which I had brought with me when, being close down to the water among some outlying rocks (as it was a very low neap tide), I saw something just under the surface of a pool, of a dull red colour, which I perceived to be a shell-fish of some kind. Stooping down, with a rapid blow of my knife I detached it, and ere it sank into the unknown depths of the pool, plunged in my left hand and secured it. It was an ormer—at least, so I supposed, and on this supposition took it home and compared it with a book on shells I had, and being satisfied with my researches, cooked and ate the mollusc, although in some doubt. Next day, feeling much as the first man who ever swallowed an oyster did—alive and hearty—I went at dead low tide and gathered some more and ate also, but finally came to the conclusion that one good sole was worth a sack of ormers. Still, there is no accounting for taste. Some of the islanders are very fond of ormers; but what is one man's meat is another's "poisson."
Although at neap tide on many occasions I gathered many more, it was more for the beauty of the shells than the flavour of the fish inside them.