The doctor and I had nothing to reply, and Mr. Green, carrying the axe, called one of the men and rowed away to the shore in triumph. During his absence the doctor, who is a cordon bleu, prepared the turkey that we had purchased at Kitty Hawk for cooking, by stuffing it with the oysters that we had tonged at Roanoke Island. By the time this culinary feat was accomplished, our master of fish culture had returned. He had cut a dozen stakes about eight feet long, which were to be used to improvise a blind, by thrusting them into the bottom and tying strings around from one to the other, and hanging reeds or grass tied in bunches over the strings.
These precautionary measures being taken, we got under-way. The wind had increased to almost a gale, and our brave little vessel fairly leaped before it towards the South like a race horse. Quite a sea had made in the broad expanse of Pamlico Sound, which can be stormy enough when in the humor, and the waves rolled after us in vain and vindictive fury. There were two large steamers going South, and we held them for some time, and had hopes of keeping up with them, but they slowly drew ahead, and left us alone in the waste of tumultuous waves.
ENGLISH SNIPE.
We made one of our best runs that day. The weather was too perfect for us to stop for fish or birds, although we saw clouds of the latter rising up in the distance from the disturbed surface of the Sound. We ought to have gone to Hatteras, or Roanoke Inlet, where we had been assured by the residents the brant shooting was magnificent, but we could not lose such unusually favorable weather, and sped on and on through the seething waves, hour after hour, till when the sun was still quite well above the horizon, we ran through the narrow channel into the peaceful waters of Core Sound.
What a change came over the spirit of our sailing, from the boisterous violence and rough seas that beat our vessel’s sides turbulently, or followed us fiercely to the scarcely ruffled bosom of the small and shallow bay, only a few miles wide, and shut in on all sides by the land. We managed to reach Lewis’s Creek before sunset, where we saw a number of working boats going to find security for the night. When we had anchored among them, the fishermen told us that there were the usual kinds of salt water fish, although there was no tide in Core Sound other than that made by the wind. They said there was good oystering off the point of Lewis’s Creek, and next day proved their words. It was a wild spot. The only mark of human habitation being an old wind-mill, which stood on the point. The weird effect was further heightened during the darkness by the lighting of fires by the fishermen, who had no sleeping accommodations on their boats, and who went ashore for the purpose.
“Would you like to kill an English snipe?” called out Seth Green to me next morning from the shore, whither he had already gone with our boatman, Charley. I had been busy, or perhaps, if the truth must be confessed, sleepy, and had just come on deck.
“Of course,” was my instantaneous reply, the idea of any one not wanting to kill an English snipe being too ridiculous to entertain for a moment.