"Moles," said Caggles, after a slight pause, in which he shivered with cold; "I—I suppose I must have come out to look for moles."
And so he had. The assertion made by Tupman that moles were blind had caused him to long to test the truth of the statement. He even dreamed of the subject, following which a somnambulistic desire to dig for moles in the tennis-ground was born within him.
He never heard the last of the ludicrous adventure, and Bottlebury had a thorough good laugh at him.
The nocturnal mole-hunter thenceforth slept in a small room by himself, with the door securely locked and a patent "catch" on the window, "so that"—as some one facetiously remarked—"he should not again have necessity to tie spades to his toes."
[MAKE QUEER CATCHES AT CAPE COD.]
Many strange fish come to the nets of the weirsmen of Cape Cod. The collection of the amateur photographer who summered at Provincetown a season would not be complete without a plate of some of them to show wondering friends on winter evenings.
Most striking, perhaps, would be the giant horse-mackerel, which were often seen.
"Four-hundred-pounders each" they were, according to the offhand estimate of the local old salt who named them for the summer folks edification. They were indeed a handsome couple, although only medium-sized representatives of a marine clan—orcynus thynnus—of which hundreds are annually taken at Provincetown in the big "catchalls," commonly termed weirs.
In a small way, the horse-mackerel is a gladiator. Prior to his advent, the sand-lance, the mackerel, the herring, pollock, and dogfish make regular visitation in Cape Cod Bay.