Thus it happened that I fell off, in the very prime of life and strength, from an able-bodied seaman and captain of the foretop to a sort of lurcher along shore, and a man who must get his own living with nets and rods and suchlike. For that very beautiful fight took place in the year 1759, before I was thirty years old, and before his present most gracious Majesty came to the throne of England. And inasmuch as a villanous Frenchman made at me with a cutlash, and a power of blue oaths (taking a nasty advantage of me, while I was yet entangled), and thumped in three of my ribs before a kind Providence enabled me to relieve him of his head at a blow--I was discharged, when we came to Spithead, with an excellent character in a silk bag, and a considerable tightness of breathing, and leave to beg my way home again. Now I had not the smallest meaning to enter into any of these particulars about myself, especially as my story must be all about other people--beautiful maidens, and fine young men, and several of the prime gentry. But as I have written it, so let it stay; because, perhaps, after all, it is well that people should have some little knowledge of the man they have to deal with, and learn that his character and position are a long way above all attempt at deceit. To come back once again, if you please, to that very hot day of July 1782--whence I mean to depart no more until I have fully done with it--both from the state of the moon, I knew, and from the neap when my wife went off, that the top of the spring was likely to be in the dusk of that same evening. At first I had thought of going down straight below us to Newton Bay, and peddling over the Black Rocks towards the Ogmore river, some two miles to the east of us. But the bright sun gave me more enterprise; and remembering how the tide would ebb, also how low my pocket was, I felt myself bound in honour to Bunny to make a real push for it, and thoroughly search the conger-holes and the lobster-ledges, which are the best on all our coast, round about Pool Tavan, and down below the old house at Sker. CHAPTER III. THE FISH ARE AS HUNGRY AS HE IS. To fish at Sker had always been a matter of some risk and conflict; inasmuch as Evan Thomas, who lived in the ancient house there, and kept the rabbit-warren, never could be brought to know that the sea did not belong to him. He had a grant from the manor, he said, and the shore was part of the manor; and whosoever came hankering there was a poacher, a thief, and a robber. With these hard words, and harder blows, he kept off most of the neighbourhood; but I always felt that the lurch of the tide was no more than the heeling of a ship, and therefore that any one free of the sea, was free of the ebb and flow of it.