“Where are you off to, Cal?”
“Come along with me and see,” Cal responded without answering the direct question. “I may need your help. Suppose you bring the big bait bucket with you. Empty the shrimps somewhere. They’re all too dead to eat, but we may need ’em for bait.”
Tom accepted the invitation and the two were quickly beyond the bend in the creek and well out of sight of the camp. As they neared the open water, Cal stopped, held the lantern high above his head, and looked about him as if in search of something. Presently he lowered the lantern, cried out, “Ah, there it is,” and strode on rapidly through the dense undergrowth.
Tom had no time to ask questions. He had enough to do to follow his long-legged companion.
After a brief struggle with vines and undergrowths of every kind, the pair came out upon a little sandy beach with a large oyster bank behind it, and Tom had no further need to ask questions, for Cal spread the tarpaulin out flat upon the sands, and both boys began gathering oysters, not from the solid bank where thousands of them had their shells tightly welded together, but from the water’s edge, and even from the water itself wherever it did not exceed a foot or so in depth. Cal explained that these submerged oysters, being nearly all the time under salt water, and growing singly, or nearly so, were far fatter and better than those in the bank or near its foot.
It did not take long to gather quite as many of the fat bivalves as the two could conveniently carry in the tarpaulin and the bait pail, and as Cal was tying up the corners of the cloth Tom began scrutinizing the sandy beach at a point which the ordinary tides did not reach. As he did so he observed a queer depression in the sand and asked Cal to come and see what it meant.
After a single glance at it, Cal exclaimed gleefully:
“Good for you, Tom. This is the luckiest find yet.”
With that he placed the lantern in a favorable position, emptied the bait pail, hurriedly knelt down, and with his hands began digging away the sand.