My first meeting with the ormer was by accident.  I was having an al fresco lunch of bread and raw limpets which I was detaching from the rocks, eating them with a seasoning of vinegar and pepper which I had brought with me when, being close down to the water among some outlying rocks (as it was a very low neap tide), I saw something just under the surface of a pool, of a dull red colour, which I perceived to be a shell-fish of some kind.  Stooping down, with a rapid blow of my knife I detached it, and ere it sank into the unknown depths of the pool, plunged in my left hand and secured it.  It was an ormer—­at least, so I supposed, and on this supposition took it home and compared it with a book on shells I had, and being satisfied with my researches, cooked and ate the mollusc, although in some doubt.  Next day, feeling much as the first man who ever swallowed an oyster did—­alive and hearty—­I went at dead low tide and gathered some more and ate also, but finally came to the conclusion that one good sole was worth a sack of ormers.  Still, there is no accounting for taste.  Some of the islanders are very fond of ormers; but what is one man’s meat is another’s “poisson.”

Although at neap tide on many occasions I gathered many more, it was more for the beauty of the shells than the flavour of the fish inside them.

For one with artistic tastes and love of colour like myself, the interior of an ormer shell is a veritable fairy grotto.  One discovery I made regarding them and that is, that they form a dainty dish for the huge conger eels which abound among the rocks, and about this bait I must presently tell a little more.

The granite rocks below high water-mark are simply spotted all over with myriads of limpets, some of them of enormous size.  Many of the shells in my collection are over three inches across, and the fish when cooked make two ample mouthfuls.  My manner of dressing them was to place them in a tub of sea water for a night, and then to lay them on a gridiron, point downward, over a bright fire, and grill them.  When cooked they would drop out of their shells when turned upside down over a plate containing vinegar and pepper, and I considered them very nice.  A friend of mine who has tasted them in Cornwall says they would make any well-bred dog sick.  Thus, I say again, tastes vary!

I must allow, however, that the leathery limpet is as far behind the delicious sole or turbot in flavour, as a turnip is inferior to an apple; but still a change is desirable, and for the matter of change I think I had a turn at everything eatable on the island or in the sea surrounding it, and still live to tell the tale.