midnight
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 .