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 the big channel bass were probably running in the surf, he merely expressed a thought which was already in Norman's mind. A half-hour later the launch lay at anchor in a deep narrow inlet separating two islands of the chain; and Norman, bidding Rusty, his Irish terrier, make himself comfortable in the cabin, went ashore, with York at the oars.

Landing on the steep sandy bank, they walked a quarter of a mile up the inlet strand, heading away from the ocean beach. The first necessity was to catch some mullet for bait, and for this purpose York carried a cast net slung over his shoulder. Norman, in accordance with his custom of the past few weeks, had brought his shotgun, and also, as an afterthought, the field glasses which he kept on the launch. Walking briskly along the inlet shore toward the back beach of the island where a small creek abounding in mullet swung in from the marshes, Norman was a little in the lead. Suddenly he halted, groped for the binoculars hanging from his shoulder by a leather thong and looked long at some object around the curve of the beach.

"York," he said, when his companion had come up, "the bass can wait a while. I think that's our friend the enemy over there." And he pointed to a big dark bird perched in a lone dead oak perhaps a third of a mile away.

The tree stood on the marshy back beach close