“Wal,” said Cap’n Amazon, walking sedately home from church with his amused niece on his arm, “I wanted a few of them mussels.  There was a mud bottom and so the water was black.  Just as I reached for the first mussel I felt something creeping around my left leg.  I thought it was eel-grass; then I thought it was an eel.

“Next thing I knowed it took holt like a leech in half a dozen places.  I jumped; but I didn’t jump far.  There was two o’ the things had me, and that left leg o’ mine was fast as a duck’s foot in the mud!”

“Oh, Uncle Amazon!” gasped Louise.

“Yep.  A third arm whipped out o’ the water had helt me round the waist tighter’n any girl of my acquaintance ever lashed her best feller.  Land sakes, that devilfish certainly give me a hi-mighty hug!

“But I had what they call down in the Spanish speakin’ islands a machette—­a big knife for cuttin’ your way through the jungle.  I hauled that out o’ the waistband of my pants and I began slicing at them snake-like arms of the critter and yelling like all get-out.

“More scare’t than hurt, I reckon.  I was a young feller, as I tell you, and hadn’t seen so much of the world as I have since,” continued Cap’n Amazon.  “But the arms seemed fairly to grow on that devilfish.  I wasn’t hacked loose when the second officer come runnin’ with his gun.  I dragged the critter nearer inshore and he got a look at it.  Both barrels went into that devilfish, and that was more than it could stomach; so it let go,” finished the captain.

“Mercy! what an experience,” commented Louise, wondering rather vaguely why the minister of the First Church had reminded her uncle of this octopus.

“Yes.  ’Twas some,” agreed Cap’n Amazon.  “But let’s step along a little livelier, Niece Louise.  I’m goin’ to give you a re’l fisherman’s chowder for dinner, an’ I want to git the pork and onions over.  I like my onions well browned before I slice in the potaters.”

Cap’n Amazon insisted on doing most of the cooking, just as Cap’n Abe had.  Louise had baked some very delicate pop-overs for breakfast that morning and the captain ate his share with appreciation.

“Pretty average nice, I call ’em, for soft-fodder,” he observed.  “But, land sakes! give me something hearty and kind of solid for reg’lar eating.  Ordinary man would starve pretty handy, I guess, on breadstuff like this.”

The chowder was both as hearty and as appetizing as one could desire.  Nor would the captain allow Louise to wash the dishes afterward.

“No, girl.  I’ll clean up this mess.  You go out and see how fur you can walk on that hard beach now it’s slack tide.  You ain’t been up there to Tapp P’int yit and seen that big house that belongs to the candy king.  Neither have I, of course,” he added; “but they been tellin’ me about it in the store.”

Louise accepted the suggestion and started to walk up the beach; but she did not get far.  There was a private dock running out beyond low-water mark just below the very first bungalow.  She saw several men coming down the steps from the top of the bluff to the shore and the bathhouses; a big camera was set up on the sands.  This must be Bozewell’s bungalow, she decided; the one engaged by the moving picture people.