into a fish, but he'd be aff it in two ticks; it's the barb that holds
them."

Next day the indefatigable one produced the cane amended; he had
whittled it down about three feet from the end and on one side,
and carved a fairly efficient barb. It was good enough, at all
events, to spear a "groper" with, that evening, in the sunset-lit
pools of the reef at low tide.

"There aren't any potatoes here," said Dick one day, after the
second rains.

"We've et 'em all months ago," replied Paddy.

"How do potatoes grow?" enquired Dick.

"Grow, is it? Why, they grow in the ground; and where else would
they grow?" He explained the process of potato-planting: cutting
them into pieces so that there was an eye in each piece, and so
forth. "Having done this," said Mr Button, "you just chuck the
pieces in the ground; their eyes grow, green leaves `pop up,' and
then, if you dug the roots up maybe, six months after, you'd find
bushels of potatoes in the ground, ones as big as your head, and
weeny ones. It's like a famiIy of childer--some's big and some's
little. But there they are in the ground, and all you have to do is to
take a fark and dig a potful of them with a turn of your wrist, as
many a time I've done it in the ould days."

"Why didn't we do that?" asked Dick.