Two grocery-stores stand opposite each other , in the centre of the village . These were the places of resort , at their idle hours , of a hardy throng of fishermen , in red baize shirts , oilcloth trousers , and boots of brown leather covering the whole leg ; true seven-league boots , but fitter to wade the ocean than walk the earth . The wearers seemed amphibious , as if they did but creep out of salt water to sun themselves ; nor would it have been wonderful to see their lower limbs covered with clusters of little shellfish , such as cling to rocks and old ship-timber over which the tide ebbs and flows . When their fleet of boats was weather-bound , the butchers raised their price , and the spit was busier than the frying-pan ; for this was a place of fish , and known as such , to all the country round about ; the very air was fishy , being perfumed with dead sculpins , hardheads , and dogfish , strewn plentifully on the beach . You see , children , the village is but little changed , since your mother and I were young . How like a dream it was , when I bent over a pool of water , one pleasant morning , and saw that the ocean had dashed its spray over me and made me a fisherman ! There were the tarpauling , the baize shirt , the oil-cloth trousers and seven-league boots , and there my own features , but so reddened with sunburn and sea-breezes , that methought I had another face , and on other shoulders too . The sea-gulls and the loons , and I , had now all one trade ; we skimmed the crested waves and sought our prey beneath them , the man with as keen enjoyment as the birds . Always , when the east grew purple , I launched my dory , my little flat-bottomed skiff , and rowed cross-handed to Point Ledge , the Middle Ledge , or , perhaps , beyond Egg Rock ; often , too , did I anchor off Dread Ledge , a spot of peril to ships unpiloted ; and sometimes spread an adventurous sail and tracked across the bay to South Shore , casting my lines in sight of Scituate . Ere nightfall , I hauled my skiff high and dry on the beach , laden with red rock-cod , or the white-bellied ones of deep water ; haddock , bearing the black marks of St. Peter 's fingers near the gills ; the longbearded hake , whose liver holds oil enough for a midnight lamp ; and now and then a mighty halibut , with a back broad as my boat . In the autumn , I trolled and caught those lovely fish , the mackerel . When the wind was high , -- when the whale-boats , anchored off the Point , nodded their slender masts at each other , and the dories pitched and tossed in the surf , -- when Nahant Beach was thundering three miles off , and the spray broke a hundred feet in air , round the distant base of Egg Rock , -- when the brimful and boisterous sea threatened to tumble over the street of our village , -- then I made a holiday on shore . Many such a day did I sit snugly in Mr. Bartlett 's store , attentive to the yarns of Uncle Parker ; uncle to the whole village , by right of seniority , but of Southern blood , with no kindred in New England . His figure is before me now , enthroned upon a mackerel-barrel ; a lean old man , of great height , but bent with years , and twisted into an uncouth shape by seven broken limbs ; furrowed also , and weather-worn , as if every gale , for the better part of a century , had caught him somewhere on the sea . He looked like a harbinger of tempest , a shipmate of the Flying Dutchman . After innumerable voyages aboard men-of-war and merchant-men , fishing-schooners and chebacco-boats , the old salt had become master of a handcart , which he daily trundled about the vicinity , and sometimes blew his fish-horn through the streets of Salem . One of Uncle Parker 's eyes had been blown out with gunpowder , and the other did but glimmer in its socket . Turning it upward as he spoke , it was his delight to tell of cruises against the French , and battles with his own shipmates , when he and an antagonist used to be seated astride of a sailor 's chest , each fastened down by a spike-nail through his trousers , and there to fight it out . Sometimes he expatiated on the delicious flavor of the liagden , a greasy and goose-like fowl , which the sailors catch with hook and line on the Grand Banks . He dwelt with rapture on an interminable winter at the Isle of Sables , where he had gladdened himself , amid polar snows , with the rum and sugar saved from the wreck of a West India schooner .
And wrathfully did he shake his fist , as he related how a party of Cape Cod men had robbed him and his companions XXXXX their lawful spoil , and sailed away with every keg of old Jamaica , leaving him not a drop to drown his sorrow .
as in into like near of over since than with