Page:Highways and Byways in Lincolnshire.djvu/320

 brought with us and the leg of a Lincolnshire sheep in the larder, we felt we could hold out for a week whilst we read, unmolested by even a passing tradesman. Sundays we spent at Halton, walking up on Saturday and down again on Monday, after which we took off our boots for the rest of the week.

One night about ten o'clock, as we were sitting over our books, a step was heard on the plank bridge, and a loud knock resounded through the house. I went to the door and opened it. It was pitch dark, and from the darkness above my head, for Dan was a tall man, came a voice: "Ah've browt ye sum dooks. Ye knaw me, Dan Gunby." We gratefully welcomed them as a relief from the sheep, and after a talk we agreed to go over and see Dan in his home at Gibraltar Point, where the Somersby Brook, "a rivulet then a river," runs out into Wainfleet haven. Accordingly, on the 12th of September, 1874, we set off, going along on the flat dyke top for four miles till we came to what seemed the end of the habitable world. Here the level, muddy flat stretched out far into the distant shallow sea, groups of wading shore-birds were visible here and there, and an occasional curlew flew, with his melancholy cry, overhead, or a lonely sea-gull passed us—

"With one waft of the wing."

We came to a small river channel with steep, slimy banks; just beyond it was an old boat half roofed over, and, sitting on it, was our friend Dan mending a net. We shouted to ask how we were to get to him, and he said, "Cum along o'er, bottoms sound." We pulled off our boots and got down without much difficulty, but to get up, "Hic labor, hoc opus est." But Dan shouted encouragement: "Now then, stick your toäs in, and goo it." We did 'goo it,' and soon landed by the old boat, and sitting on it, we asked him if he always slept there, and what he did for a living. He answered "Yees, this is my plaäce, an' it's snug, an all. Ye see I hev a bit of a stoäve here."

"Is that your duck-shout (the name for a sort of canoe for duck shooting) and gun?"

"Yees, ye sees I'm a bit of a gunner, an' a bit of a fisherman, an' a bit of a fiddler."

"And a bit of a poet, too, aren't you, Dan?"

"Well, I puts things down sometimes in the winter evenings like."