When Bill came back, he said,—
“Didn’t you say the Yarmouth folk used salt for their herrings?”
“Yes,” answered Tom. “Why do you ask?”
“Why, because I’ve found some. There’s a bit of rock stands up above the ground about a hundred yards away, and the top of it is fashioned like a basin, and in that there’s a lot of salt, though it’s wet now from last night’s rain.”
“That’s good news, anyway. Do you just go and get some.”
“All right!” answered Bill; and he soon returned with a couple of handkerchiefs filled with coarse, wet salt.
“Now, how do they put the salt into the fish and smoke ’em at the same time?” I asked. “We haven’t a harness-tub to put ’em in.”
“I don’t rightly know,” said Tom; “but I suppose if, when we’ve cleaned a fish out, we put some salt inside, and tie it up again with a strip of palm leaf before hanging it up to smoke, it’ll answer pretty well.”
We all now set to work cleaning the fish Bill had brought, and filled their insides with salt, and then hung them up as we had done the others; and when we had finished we found we had about forty unsalted and sixty salted, averaging over a pound weight each, most of them being a sort of rock cod.
With this Tom said we might be satisfied for the time, and that we should now get on with our hut as fast as we could.