"How far do we have to go before we begin to dredge?" he finally asked his companion.
"I reckon our grounds are about eight miles out," replied the sailor.
Alec opened his eyes wide, but said nothing. By this time they were far offshore. They could still see the trees and haystacks on the meadows but the shore-line was becoming more and more indistinct. The oyster-boats had scattered in every direction, and now that the ships had separated there did not seem to be nearly as many of them.
"There's Egg Island Light," said the sailor, pointing ahead to starboard.
Alec looked, and finally made out what seemed to him a tiny, dark column in the gray waves. With every minute the expanse of water widened and the shore grew more indistinct. Suddenly Alec's attention was attracted by something far ahead in the water. He saw at once that it was a little cluster of saplings, such as he had seen lashed to the side of the Mary and Hattie. Their bushy tops gave them the appearance of a tiny thicket growing right in the water. Then he saw a second cluster of stakes, and beyond them, at intervals, other stakes. All these little groups of stakes were in a straight line, so that the effect was, indeed, not unlike a long fence-row. As the Bertha B drew nearer to the oyster-beds, Alec could see stakes in every direction. Most of them, he noticed, were just bare poles, that stuck out of water two or three feet, like the tips of so many fishing poles. But some groups of stakes were still bushy at the top, like the first clusters he had seen. He asked his companion why two sorts of stakes were used.
"They was all alike when they was put down," said Sailor Bishop, "but most of them have lost their tops. The waves and the ice and the oyster-boats themselves break off the little branches at the tops, leaving only the bare poles."
"Then why aren't all the tops broken and not just some?"
"Oh! Those bushy ones have just been put down. You see the oystermen like to mark their beds well in the fall. It makes it so much easier to find their grounds when spring comes."
"What do you mean?"