Just before the scullers gained the river mouth they overtook a weather-beaten old fisherman leisurely rowing his heavy tub out to sea. Pratt gave him a cheery hail as they came abreast of him, and learning, in answer to a question, that he was proceeding to inspect his lobster pots nearly a mile out, they asked if they might accompany him.
"Ay sure, I've nothing against it," said the old man.
"Nor against us, I hope," rejoined Pratt, smiling.
"Not as I knows on."
"Then we're friends already. I always make friends in two seconds and a half, and being, like Cæsar, constant as the northern star, I stick like a limpet. You can't shake me off."
"Same as a lobster when he gets a grip."
"Ah! you know more about lobsters than I do. Is that a lobster pot on the beach there?"
He indicated a low wooden hut, standing a little above high-water mark, on the shore curving away to the east.
"You be a joker, sir," said the fisher, his native taciturnity thawed. "That be a fisherman's hut. Fisherman, says I, but 'tis little fishing as goes on hereabouts nowadays. I mind the time when there was a tidy little fleet in these waters, but that was long ago. There was good harbourage in those days, but the sea have cast up a bar across the mouth of the river; we're going over it now; and it makes the passage dangerous for a boat of any draught. One or two old gaffers like me goes out now and again, but 'tis not what it was in my young days."
"That hut looks a bit dilapidated--is it yours?"