I had many other fishing adventures, but I think the above was about the most exciting. I had many good takes of whiting and pollock, but was not so fortunate among the soles, and plaice, and such-like ground game, as my net was a very ramshackle affair of my own construction. I had also some remarkable miscellaneous captures at different times. Once in the winter I had laid a long line for codling, and brought up, firmly hooked, a very nice red tablecloth, beautifully worked round the edge by some skilled hand in an Oriental pattern. I used it on gala days as a flag, and I dare say passers by in the various vessels wondered to what nationality it belonged, as the centre was ornamented with a golden elephant with very curly tusks worked in white beads. Another day I fished up a copper oil can, such as engineers use to oil machinery with; and yet another time a bag of gravel which had apparently once formed part of a yacht's ballast. When I found time heavy on my hands I would often take my canoe about fifty yards south of La Fauconnaire, and with two or three lines fish for rock fish, and never, on a single occasion, returned empty-handed. The worst part of this performance was digging the bait of lugworms on the little beach of Crevichon. It was terribly hard work lifting the rocks and boulders aside to find a place to dig, and then it was harder work in digging the nasty worms from the granite grit in which they resided, dwelt, or had their horrid being. Probably these hairy, oozy creatures have their joys and pleasures, and their woes, just as every other of God's creatures, but of what their happiness consists who can tell? Anyway they are good for bait, and so have use if not beauty to commend them. Crabs and lobsters I could trap at any time by putting down "pots" anywhere round the island; but after a few weeks I got quite tired of them for the table, but would occasionally put down a couple of "pots" to see what of a curious nature I could catch. The crayfish, spider-crabs, and hermit crabs, gave me infinite amusement, as they are so different in their manners and customs to the ordinary crabs, and are very bellicose, going for each other tooth and nail, or rather legs and claws, in a most terrible manner. The way these little crustaceans maimed each other put me in mind of the scene in Scott's "Fair Maid of Perth," where the rival clans hew each others' limbs off with double-handed swords, so that a truce has to be called for the purpose of clearing the battle-ground of human _debris_. The crabs have the advantage over the human species, insomuch that they can reproduce a lost limb. Finding I could catch a large quantity of fish of all kinds, especially rock fish, which, being new to me, I greatly admired, I set about constructing a fish pond near the house.