Alongshore the soft clam is the
only clam used for fritters; the tough, long-keeping quahog is
shipped to the less-enlightened "city trade."
It was not yet sunrise, but as Tunis walked down through one of
those cuts in the edge of the headland, following a well-defined
cart track, he saw the rose-glow of the sun's round face staining
the mist on the eastern horizon.
He came down upon the hard sand of the beach and walked toward a
tiny cove into which the mud flats extended and on which he knew the
clams were plentiful and ripe. Glistening pools of black water,
showing where other diggers had raided the flat, were interspersed
with trembling patches of black sand. When Tunis began to cross the
flat the sand before his boots became alive with tiny, shooting
geysers of clean water. He set to work.
And while he was thus engaged he heard suddenly a shrill outcry and
a most mysterious sound up in one of the gullies toward the summit
of Wreckers' Head. Here thousands of tons of sand had run out of the
cut in the steep bank and formed a dykelike way to the beach itself.
More and more sand was slipping down this way all the time. A strong
man could scarcely make his way up the incline, the sand was so
unstable.
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