“What I tell you?  Can’t fool-a ze old man, dat ’s what.  I hit it in ze dark just so well as in ze sunshine.  I know—­I know.”

“Is she goin’ to howl?” ’Frisco Kid asked from the cabin, where he was starting the fire.

The Frenchman gravely studied sea and sky for a couple of minutes.

“Mebbe blow over—­mebbe blow up,” was his doubtful verdict.  “Get breakfast queeck, and we try ze dredging.”

Smoke was rising from the cabins of the different sloops, denoting that they were all bent on getting the first meal of the day.  So far as the Dazzler was concerned, it was a simple matter, and soon they were putting a single reef in the mainsail and getting ready to weigh anchor.

Joe was curious.  These were undoubtedly the oyster-beds; but how under the sun, in that wild sea, were they to get oysters?  He was quickly to learn the way.  Lifting a section of the cockpit flooring, French Pete brought out two triangular frames of steel.  At the apex of one of these triangles; in a ring for the purpose, he made fast a piece of stout rope.  From this the sides (inch rods) diverged at almost right angles, and extended down for a distance of four feet or more, where they were connected by the third side of the triangle, which was the bottom of the dredge.  This was a flat plate of steel over a yard in length, to which was bolted a row of long, sharp teeth, likewise of steel.  Attached to the toothed plate, and to the sides of the frame was a net of very coarse fishing-twine, which Joe correctly surmised was there to catch the oysters raked loose by the teeth from the bottom of the bay.

A rope being made fast to each of the dredges, they were dropped overboard from either side of the Dazzler.  When they had reached the bottom, and were dragging with the proper length of line out, they checked her speed quite noticeably.  Joe touched one of the lines with his hands, and could feel plainly the shock and jar and grind as it tore over the bottom.

“All in!” French Pete shouted.

The boys laid hold of the line and hove in the dredge.  The net was full of mud and slime and small oysters, with here and there a large one.  This mess they dumped on the deck and picked over while the dredge was dragging again.  The large oysters they threw into the cockpit, and shoveled the rubbish overboard.  There was no rest, for by this time the other dredge required emptying.  And when this was done and the oysters sorted, both dredges had to be hauled aboard, so that French Pete could put the Dazzler about on the other tack.

The rest of the fleet was under way and dredging back in similar fashion.  Sometimes the different sloops came quite close to them, and they hailed them and exchanged snatches of conversation and rough jokes.  But in the main it was hard work, and at the end of an hour Joe’s back was aching from the unaccustomed strain, and his fingers were cut and bleeding from his clumsy handling of the sharp-edged oysters.