“But—but how did he get down into the sand and only leave such a tiny hole behind him?” demanded Dot, bent upon getting information.
“Ah, shipmet! there ye have it. I ain’t a l’arned man. I ain’t never been to school. I went ter sea all my days till I got this here leg shot off me and had to take to wearin’ a timber-toe. I couldn’t tell ye, shipmets, how a clam does go down his hole an’ yet pulls the hole down arter him.”
“Oh!” sighed Dot, disappointedly.
“It’s one o’ them wonders of natur’ ye hear tell on. I never could understand it myself—like some ignerant landlubbers believin’ the world is flat! I know it’s round, ’cos I been down one side o’ it an’ come up the other!
“As for science, an’ them things, shipmets, I don’t know nothin’ ’bout ’em. I digs clams; I don’t pester none erbout how they grows——”
And he promptly dug another and then a third. The girls watched him, fascinated at his skill. Nor did the “peg-leg” seem to trouble him at all in his work.
“Please, sir,” asked Tess, after some moments, “how did you come to lose your leg—your really truly one, I mean?”
“Pi-rats,” declared the man, with an unmoved countenance. “Pi-rats, shipmet—on the Spanish Main.”
“Oh!” breathed both girls together. Somehow that expression was faintly reminiscent to them. Agnes had a book about pirates, and she had read out loud in the evenings at the sitting-room table, at the old Corner House. Tess and Dot were not aware that “the Spanish Main” had been cleared of pirates, some years before this husky-voiced old clam-digger was born.
The clam-digger offered no details about his loss, and Tess and Dot felt some delicacy about asking further questions. Besides, Tom Jonah came along just then and evinced some distaste for the company of the roughly dressed one-legged man. Of course, he could not dig clams in his best clothes, as Tess pointed out; but Tom Jonah had confirmed doubts about all ill-dressed people. So the girls accompanied the dog back towards the tents.