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262 I laugh and work with them—I joke at my work,
 * like a mettlesome young man.

In winter I take my eel-basket and eel-spear and travel
 * out on foot on the ice—I have a small axe to cut
 * holes in the ice;

Behold me, well-clothed, going gayly, or returning in
 * the afternoon—my brood of tough boys accompanying
 * me.

My brood of grown and part-grown boys, who love
 * to be with none else so well as they love to be
 * with me,

By day to work with me, and by night to sleep with
 * me.

Or, another time, in warm weather, out in a boat, to
 * lift the lobster-pots, where they are sunk with
 * heavy stones, (I know the buoys;)

O the sweetness of the Fifth Month morning upon the
 * water, as I row, just before sunrise, toward the
 * buoys;

I pull the wicker pots up slantingly—the dark green
 * lobsters are desperate with their claws, as I take
 * them out—I insert wooden pegs in the joints of
 * their pincers,

I go to all the places, one after another, and then row
 * back to the shore,

There, in a huge kettle of boiling water, the lobsters
 * shall be boiled till their color becomes scarlet.

Or, another time, mackerel-taking, Voracious, mad for the hook, near the surface, they
 * seem to fill the water for miles;