The next day, which was December 8th, we passed Nag’s-head Hotel, and came to anchor in a perfect little harbor in the lower part of Roanoke Island, where Captain Cain once had a terrapin farm. It was a charming, though deserted, spot, a bay just large enough for the yacht to swing in, and completely land-locked, the buildings tumbling to pieces, the terrapin ponds still there, but with not only their occupants departed, but the very fences falling down or being used for firewood. The speculation had failed, because even there, in the very home and abiding place of the terrapin, he had grown so scarce that a sufficient business could not be done to make it profitable. Terrapins are taken, as Mr. Green soon found out, in bag or trawl nets, that are drawn along the bottom, as we at the North use a dredge for oysters. On the front of the net, which hangs loosely behind, is an iron bar, of sufficient weight to lie close to the bottom as it is being dragged; this slips under the terrapins, which are thus carried into the net. We readily understood that they were not plenty, when we were informed that “count” terrapins, that is, those over six inches in length, bring on the ground one dollar apiece.
The weather had become very cold for yachting. The thermometer fell to eighteen degrees during the night, and we found that all the resources of our vessel were hardly equal to keeping us warm in our berths. Early next morning we obtained our first oysters. We had brought oyster tongs with us; in fact, if there was any kind of rod, reel, line, net, hook, sinker, swivel, or fishing device whatever that we had not brought I should like to be informed of it. When Mr. Green joined the yacht and produced from the bowels of an immense trunk, a luxury that in itself I never knew him to allow himself before, and which was in our way the entire journey till we got rid of it at Jacksonville, much to its owner’s chagrin—first two breech-loaders, then a rifle and a hundred weight of ammunition, then an immense bundle of sporting rods, next a box of lines and reels, and finally an overgrown scrapbook filled with all manner of gangs of hooks, the doctor and myself felt that the sporting interest would not suffer. As I had sent him word that he need bring neither guns, fishing tackle, nor ammunition, it was evident that he intended we should not fall short. But now when our men began tonging up the delicious bivalves which we had not seen for so many days, on account of the freshness of the water, we felt thankful for one of our precautions. Here let me warn the reader that he be sure to bring oyster tongs with him. He will find it difficult to get them in the South at all, and if he can they will be much heavier and more awkward than those in use with us. Just South of the opening into our night’s harbor, and in the main channel, we found a man at work oystering and we joined him promptly, confident that where there was enough for one there was in this matter enough for two. Either the oysters off the lower end of Roanoke Island are very delicious, or else our appetites were sharp from abstinence. For as fast as our man Charley brought them to the surface and deposited them on the deck, we opened them with a skill founded on some experience and more desire, and devoured them with hearty gusto.
We loaded up with oysters and then started once more on our course, but the wind fell off and we anchored in Stumpy Point Bay, some thirty miles to the southward and on the main shore. At our last stopping place a sick man had come aboard for advice, and here we not only found two others, but were also informed that their mother was at the point of death. There seemed to be a sublime faith in these people that all Northerners must know something of medicine, as none of them had a suspicion of our having a physician in the party. Indeed they came for “a drawing of tea” as they called it, rather than for any special medicine, for they appeared to consider sickness the natural condition of man, as among those terribly unhealthy swamps and low lands it probably is. After that almost everywhere we went we were asked for “a drawing of tea” for some sick person.
Their ailments were evidently only too well founded, and as the people were clearly not a complaining set, we were sorry that we had not brought more of the coveted article with us. The whites of this coast looked weazened, thin, yellow, and cadaverous, as if they had a perpetual conflict with fever in which they invariably got the worst of it. They had the shadow of death in their faces. In their motions they exhibited a langour which strangers are apt to attribute to laziness, but which I believe due to disease. Let a man once take the southern fever, and it will be many months if not years before he feels like himself again. Our latest patients were fishermen, and to Mr. Green’s insatiable inquiries they explained that they caught in their seasons shad; rock, our striped bass; trout, our weakfish; hickory shad, white perch, mullet, spot, round-nosed shad and flat backs, though what these latter were was more than we could guess. They said that the fishing had fallen off greatly of late years, but that the prices had increased and that now they were paid seventy five cents for a roe shad, and thirty for bucks.
Next day was clear and cold, with a strong and favorable wind from the north-west, so much so that even the imperturbable doctor was impatient to be off, but Mr. Green had an idea, and when he has anything of that sort he is the last man to part with it without full fruition. To our proposal to get under weigh early he replied.
“Beyond this you tell me that we have a great stretch of open water?”
“Yes,” I answered, “the entire Pamlico Sound, which must be a hundred and fifty miles long and fifty broad, so the more advantage we take of this favorable wind the better.”
“Well, you expect to find ducks, don’t you, on the route?” he inquired by way of response.
“I hardly know what we shall find,” I answered, “but I should like to find ducks, and have heard that there are innumerable brant on the ocean side.”
“That is just as I supposed,” was Mr. Green’s reply, as he took up the axe that lay on the deck, “and as you have no battery, how do you expect to kill them?”