on the coast, and inexperienced eyes would
overlook it, though perhaps they might
perceive the fish leaping in another place,
turning the water into a flashing sheet of
silver. But the experienced eyes would have
the best of it, for a better shoal is shown by
colour, with perhaps one fish flashing out
here and there, than is betrayed by the
leaping or stoiting, as the fishermen call it,
of a hundred.

In the first case, the fish lie dead—a steady
shoal, so large and leisurely as not to be easily
frightened by a boat sailing almost over it.
The stoiting school are called skirmers,
and consist only of a few hundred scattered
fish with very few below the water.

Now, from their cellars on the sea-shore,
sturdy arms are dragging forth nets and
ropes and baskets in seemingly endless
confusion. After a time, however, things sort
themselves into their respective places in the
three boats which belong to each seine. The
largest contains the seine itself; the second
is called the vollier, which follows the seine
boat; while the third—a smaller one—
contains the master seiner, or director of the
whole, an experienced pilchard-fisher.

The general complement to each seine is
eighteen men or thereabouts; who, besides
their wages and allowance of eatables and
drinkables, have a share in the fish caught;
not a bad plan, as it ensures their
best endeavours to catch all they can.
Long after the other boats have been got
ready you see the string of men staggering
down with the seine, coiling it up in the
boat, until you begin to think there is no end
to the net. It is not quite endless, but is
about two hundred and forty fathoms in
length and fifteen in depth, and being,
moreover, heavily leaded, it is by no means an
easy task to get it into the boat. As for the
getting it out again, that is a different matter
altogether, as you will learn presently.

When at length the mortal coil is all on
board, the boats start. The seine boat pulls
out about two or three miles, the vollier
about a quarter of a mile closer in shore and
a little astern of the other. The little boat
skims about in search of a school in a favourable
position where the bottom is clear of
rocks. This office of dodging about and
hanging near the fish gives this boat her
name—the lurker. At some places on the
coast men are stationed on the hills, who, by
hallooing or telegraphing by significant
gestures, point out the shoals to the boats.

But generally the master seiner does this
work, and when he has found the fish, is to
be seen signalling frantically with arms, legs,
and hat, in a manner eccentric to the
uninitiated, but quite intelligible to the crews of
the two boats, which come creeping quietly
up to their prey. Three men in the seine
boat divest themselves of every strip of clothing,
preparatory to shooting the seine when
the signal is given. The vollier pulls up to
the first boat and receives the rope which
is attached to the end of the seine, and then
ships its oars.

As soon, as the master-mariner sees that
all is ready, he dashes down his hat—if he is
an exciteable man he generally dances on it
too, but that is not a part of his duty. In a
second the sturdy unencumbered three begin
to heave over the net. The boat shoots
ahead, and makes a wide circle round the
shoal until it reaches the vollier again, when
—in a well-managed shoot—the seine is all
overboard.

It seems hardly possible even to those
who have seen it—that a seine should be
shot in a time a little under five minutes,
but so it is! Four minutes and a half is
considered a good shoot, anything the other
side of five minutes is reckoned clumsy.
Of course the three men are very much
exhausted, and do not recover from the
fatigue for some few minutes afterwards, and
one cannot wonder that—as it has sometimes
happened—men should die in the boat after
such immense exertion.

When the two ends of the seine have met,
the vollier men lash them together with ropes
for a short length, forming what is called the
goose neck, which reduces the circle of the
seine to a smaller compass. Looked at from
above, the seine now looks like the outline of
a common peg-top—the body of the top being
represented by the line of corks in the circle
of the seine, while the peg is formed by the
aforesaid goose-neck. This done they attach
grapnels to different points in the circumference,
and then row ashore until the time
comes for taking up the fish.

At about eleven at night—if there be no
moon so much the better, for, at sea, it is
never absolutely dark, and the fish are not
so easily scared in the absence of light—the
boats set out with a small net, entitled a
tuck-sieve, which they cast inside the other
and bring up to the surface, dipping the fish
out in baskets and throwing them into the
boats. The stop-seine is still left in the water
until by successive tuckings it is emptied. If
only a small quantity is believed to be caught,
the stop-seine itself is hauled up; but, if
otherwise, is not removed, as there would be
a chance of breaking it, or if not that, at
least, of having more fish ashore than could
be bulked before they were spoilt.

The seine is, in fact, a salt-water pond to
keep the fish fresh, and, in the case of a good
haul, stops down two or three days. You can
see it from the hill by the circle of corks and
the glossy appearance of the sea around it,
caused by the oil of the fish.

But this is only looking on the bright side
of pilchard-fishing, for it has its dark side,
too. Not to mention such accidents as the
fish escaping, while the seine is being shot, or
a huge marauding shark making breaches
through and through the net, occasionally a
heavy ground-swell sets in in the night, and