"Why, he'd fence it in, of course, or mark the boundary lines in some way."
"Well, young fellow, oystermen have just as much brains as farmers. And they are just as particular to fence in their own grounds, too."
Alec's face was blank for a moment. Then he smiled broadly. "Now you are kidding me," he said.
"Not for a minute," said the captain. "Do you see that boat over there—the Mary and Hattie?"
"Sure!"
"Do you see those long poles she carries over her starboard rail, near the stern? They're long saplings with all the branches trimmed off but the top ones."
"I see them," said Alec.
"Well, those are the kind of markers we use to stake off an oyster-bed. You see there are natural beds in the Bay, where the state won't allow any dredging except to ketch seed-oysters for spring planting. But an oysterman can lease as much land elsewhere as he wants and plant it with oysters. The state surveys it and then the oysterman marks it off with those poles. And if anybody but the owner dredges oysters in that ground he'll get just what a fellow would get if he went into a farmer's field and stole his crops. The oysterman owns every oyster in his bed."
"Honestly?" asked Alec, who was so much astonished that he forgot his manners. "Why, I supposed that the oysters grew anywhere on the bottom and that the oystermen just dredged wherever they felt like dredging."
"Humph!" said the captain. "There'd be a lot of oysters left in a few years if we did that. The beds would be dredged clean. That's the way they used to ketch oysters, and the state had to put a stop to it in order to save any oysters at all. Why, the whole Atlantic coast used to be covered with oysters, and now there's only a few beds left. This bed in the Maurice River Cove is one of the most valuable in the whole United States. But it wouldn't last long if the state didn't regulate oystering."