TIDE would be high at Little Inlet an hour after sunrise. Shortly before dawn Jen Murray walked from his cabin at the edge of the marshes to the creek landing where he kept his boat. On his shoulder rested a rusty single-barreled shotgun. In his right hand he carried a surf line neatly coiled and a battered bait bucket half full of six-inch mullet. He walked briskly, because the November air was cold.
Jen welcomed that bite in the air. Among the dusky marshmen of the Low Country few could read more skillfully the signs pertaining to fish and ducks. This, to Jen's way of thinking, would be a perfect morning—chill and gray, with a rising tide sweeping on to high flood and a light offshore wind from the north. The combination was excellent. There would be bass in the surf at Little Inlet; the bluebill flocks would be winging in from the sea to the rivers and creeks of the marshlands; though the season was early, he might even find a few squadrons of black mallards.
The flooding tide lapped about the worm-eaten posts of the landing. Jen's square-headed, flat-
