"This here's the grains," said the old gentleman, pointing to a five-pronged spear, on a long slight pole, with a cord attached to the shaft. "We uses this to take bonito and dolphin out in the hot seas. Strikes 'em as they play under the bobstay, you know." "And what's this?" said Dick eagerly. "Backbone of a shark, twelve foot long, as we hooked and drew aboard o' the _Princess_ off Barbadoes, Jennywury sixteen, eighteen hundred forty-nine." "You caught it with a hook?" cried Dick. "Baited with a bit o' very bad salt pork," said the old man. Then, pointing with the stem of his pipe: "His jaws." Then from the lancet-toothed jaws to a sea-snake in a large bottle of spirits--an unpleasant looking little serpent, said to be poisonous. In a glass case was the complete shell of a lobster, out of which the crustacean had crawled; and beside this were some South Sea bows and arrows, pieces of coral from all parts of the world, a New Zealand paddle on the wall, opposite to a couple of Australian spears. Hanks of sea-weed hung from nails. There was a caulking hammer that had been fished up from the bottom of some dock, all covered with acorn barnacles, and an old bottle incrusted with oyster-shells, the glass having begun to imitate the iridescent lining of the oyster. Under the side-table was a giant oyster from off the coast of Java. Over the chimney-glass the snout of a sword-fish. A cannon-ball--a thirty-two pounder--rested in a wooden cup, a ball that had no history; and close by it, in a glass case, was a very ill-shaped cannon-ball, about one-fourth its size, which had a history, having been picked out of the wall of Saint Anthony's Church on the cliff, into which it had been fired by the Spaniards in the days of "good Queen Bess." There were curiosities enough to have taken the young visitor hours more to see, only while they were in the midst of them Aunt Ruth came in smiling, and in a state of compromise--that is to say, there had been no time to change her dress, but she had mounted her best cap and put on her black watered-silk apron, two pieces of confectionery that it would take half a chapter to properly describe, so they may go with the simple announcement that they were wonders. "Tea is ready," said the old lady; and she smiled more graciously still when Dick stepped forward and offered his arm to walk the four steps across to the second best room, where meals were always spread.