the Island of Frogs, for the _Spray_ was charmed by a million voices.
From the Island of Frogs we made for the Island of Birds, called
Gannet Island, and sometimes Gannet Rock, whereon is a bright,
intermittent light, which flashed fitfully across the _Spray's_ deck
as she coasted along under its light and shade. Thence shaping a
course for Briar's Island, I came among vessels the following
afternoon on the western fishing-grounds, and after speaking a
fisherman at anchor, who gave me a wrong course, the _Spray_ sailed
directly over the southwest ledge through the worst tide-race in the
Bay of Fundy, and got into Westport harbor in Nova Scotia, where I had
spent eight years of my life as a lad.

The fisherman may have said "east-southeast," the course I was
steering when I hailed him; but I thought he said "east-northeast,"
and I accordingly changed it to that. Before he made up his mind to
answer me at all, he improved the occasion of his own curiosity to
know where I was from, and if I was alone, and if I didn't have "no
dorg nor no cat." It was the first time in all my life at sea that I
had heard a hail for information answered by a question. I think the
chap belonged to the Foreign Islands. There was one thing I was sure
of, and that was that he did not belong to Briar's Island, because he
dodged a sea that slopped over the rail, and stopping to brush the
water from his face, lost a fine cod which he was about to ship. My
islander would not have done that. It is known that a Briar Islander,
fish or no fish on his hook, never flinches from a sea. He just tends
to his lines and hauls or "saws." Nay, have I not seen my old friend
Deacon W. D---, a good man of the island, while listening to a sermon
in the little church on the hill, reach out his hand over the door of
his pew and "jig" imaginary squid in the aisle, to the intense delight
of the young people, who did not realize that to catch good fish one