the rapidity with which he caught the "knack of it" after that was a
great credit to him. He did not miss the next one he pulled up.

It was great fun; but it had its slack moments, and in one of these Dab
suddenly exclaimed,--

"The young black rascal! If he hasn't gone and got a sheep's-head!"

"A sheep's-head?"

They were both staring at the old punt, where Dick Lee was apparently
enjoying the most extraordinary good fortune.

"Yes, that's it. That's why he beats us so badly. They're a sight
better'n clams, only you can't always get one. I wonder where he picked
up that one."

"But how he does pull 'em in!"

"We're doing well enough," began Dabney, when suddenly there came a
shrill cry of pain from the black boy's punt.

"He's barefooted," shouted Dab, with, it must be confessed, something
like a grin; "and one of the little pirates has pinned him with his
nippers."

That was the difficulty exactly, and there need not have been any very
serious result of such an expression of a crab's bad temper. But Dick
Lee was more than ordinarily averse to any thing like physical pain, and
the crab which now had him by the toe was a very muscular and vicious