Cormorant Crag | Page 5

said.
"Yes, I did: you saw its tail. I've got it under my hand now."
"You've dropped it," cried Vince. "Lift up."
Mike raised his hand, and there, sure enough, was the lizard's tail,
writhing like a worm, and apparently as full of life as its late owner, but,
not being endowed with feet, unable to escape.
"Poor little wretch!" said Vince; "how horrid! But he has got away."
"Without his tail!"
"Yes; but that will soon grow again."
"Think so?"
"Why, of course it will: just as a crab's or lobster's claw does."
"Hullo, young gentlemen!" said a gruff voice, and a thick-set, elderly

man stopped short to look down upon them, his grim, deeply-lined
brown face twisted up into a smile as he took off an old sealskin cap
and began to softly polish his bald head, which was surrounded by a
thick hedge of shaggy grey hair, but paused for a moment to give one
spot a rub with his great rough, gnarled knuckles. His hands were
enormous, and looked as if they had grown into the form most suitable
for grasping a pair of oars to tug a boat against a heavy sea.
His dress was exceedingly simple, consisting of a coarsely-knitted blue
jersey shirt that might have been the great-grandfather of the one Vince
wore; and a pair of trousers, of a kind of drab drugget, so thick that they
would certainly have stood up by themselves, and so cut that they came
nearly up to the man's armpits, and covered his back and chest, while
the braces he wore were short in the extreme. To finish the description
of an individual who played a very important part in the lives of the
two island boys, he had on a heavy pair of fisherman's boots, which
might have been drawn up over his knees, but now hung clumsily about
his ankles, like those of smugglers in a penny picture, as he stood
looking down grimly, and slowly resettled his sealskin cap upon his
head.
"What are you two a-doing of?" he asked. "Nothing," said Mike
shortly.
"And what brings you round here?"
"I've been taking Jemmy Carnach a bottle of physic; and we came
round," cried Vince. "Why?"
"Taking Jemmy Carnach a bottle of physic," said the old fellow, with a
low, curious laugh, which sounded as if an accident had happened to
the works of a wooden clock. "He's mighty fond o' making himself
doctor's bills. I'd ha' cured him if he'd come to me."
"What would you have given him, Daygo?"
"Give him?" said the man, rubbing his great brown eagle-beak nose
with a finger that would have grated nutmeg easily: "I'd ha' give him a

mug o' water out of a tar tub, and a lotion o' rope's end, and made him
dance for half an hour. He'd ha' been `quite well thank ye' to-morrow
morning."
Vince laughed.
"Ay, that's what's the matter with him, young gentleman. A man who
can't ketch lobsters and sell 'em like a Christian, but must take 'em
home, and byle 'em, and then sit and eat till you can see his eyes
standing out of his head like the fish he wolfs, desarves to be ill. Well, I
must be off and see what luck I've had."
"Come on, Mike," cried Vince, springing up--an order which his
companion obeyed with alacrity.
The old fellow frowned and stared.
"And where may you be going?" he asked.
"Along with you," said Vince promptly.
"Where?"
"You said you were going out to look at your lobster-pots and nets,
didn't you?"
"Nay, ne'er a word like it," growled the man.
"Yes, you did," cried Mike. "You said you were going to see what luck
you'd had."
"Ay, so I did; but that might mean masheroons or taters growing, or
rabbit in a trap aside the cliff."
"Yes," said Vince, laughing merrily; "or a bit of timber, or a sea chest,
or a tub washed up among the rocks, mightn't it, Mike? Only fancy old
Joe Daygo going mushrooming!"
"You're a nice sarcy one as ever I see," said the man, with another of

his wooden-wheel laughs. "I like masheroons as well as any man."
"Yes, but you don't go hunting for them," said Vince; "and you never
grow potatoes; and as for setting a trap for a rabbit--not you."
"You're fine and cunning, youngster," said the man, with a grim look;
and his keen, clear eyes gazed searchingly at the lad from under his
shaggy brows.
"Sit on the cliff with your old glass," said Vince, "when you're not
fishing or selling your lobsters and crabs. He don't eat them himself,
does he, Mike?"
"No. My father says he makes more of his fish than any one, or he
wouldn't be the richest