Finally, filling our pockets with doughnuts, which he was pleased to
find that we called by the same name that he did, and paying for our
entertainment, we took our departure; but he followed us out of doors,
and made us tell him the names of the vegetables which he had raised
from seeds that came out of the _Franklin_. They were cabbage,
broccoli, and parsley. As I had asked him the names of so many things,
he tried me in turn with all the plants which grew in his garden, both
wild and cultivated. It was about half an acre, which he cultivated
wholly himself. Besides the common garden vegetables, there were
Yellow-Dock, Lemon Balm, Hyssop, Gill-go-over-the-ground. Mouse-ear,
Chick-weed, Roman Wormwood, Elecampane, and other plants. As we stood
there, I saw a fish-hawk stoop to pick a fish out of his pond.
“There,” said I, “he has got a fish.”
“Well,” said the old man, who was looking all the while, but could see
nothing, “he didn’t dive, he just wet his claws.”
And, sure enough, he did not this time, though it is said that they
often do, but he merely stooped low enough to pick him out with his
talons; but as he bore his shining prey over the bushes, it fell to the
ground, and we did not see that he recovered it. That is not their
practice.
Thus, having had another crack with the old man, he standing bareheaded
under the eaves, he directed us “athwart the fields,” and we took to
the beach again for another day, it being now late in the morning.
It was but a day or two after this that the safe of the Provincetown
Bank was broken open and robbed by two men from the interior, and we
learned that our hospitable entertainers did at least transiently
harbor the suspicion that we were the men.
VI
THE BEACH AGAIN
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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