Page:Bill the minder.djvu/306

 THE CAMP-FOLLOWERS was a fisherman, and upon the only spot on the bank which remained invariably high and dry, the clever man had erected a shed which served us for home, and which, at least, protected us from the showers of spray blown from the rough seas, and the chill winds that blew across the neighbouring marshes, as well as the cold rains that, in the fall of the year, flooded the adjacent country for miles around. A dozen stout beams, that had been cast up by the waves, served, each with one end deeply embedded in the wet sand, as a framework for our humble mansion. These were covered over with numerous skins of fish and pieces of old rag, all neatly stitched together by our industrious mother, or pinned by fish-bones skilfully sharpened by grinding their ends between two stones. Our good dad's stock-in-trade consisted of one long piece of frayed string, with a sharpened fishbone, bent in the form of a hook, fastened at one end, a small boat and a paddle, the former of which he had skilfully fashioned out of an old basket that had been washed ashore, and over which he had stretched more of the rags and fish-skins, of which we always possessed a goodly supply saved over from our meals.

'During the long winter months we were entirely cut off from our fellow creatures by the floods and the terrible storms at sea, and were compelled to subsist entirely upon our own resources; and thus we learnt, after many a bitter trial, to make almost everything we required from the spoils brought home by our 230