creaking of
cordage, and the "chug-chug" of the vessel's bows as they drop into the
trough of the sea. All sails are furled, the bare poles showing black
against the starlit sky, and, with one man on watch on the deck, each
drifts idly before the breeze. Below, in stuffy cabins and fetid
forecastles, the men are sleeping the deep and dreamless sleep that hard
work in the open air brings as one of its rewards. All is as quiet as
though a mystic spell were laid on all the fleet. But when the sky to the
eastward begins to turn gray, signs of life reappear. Here and there in
the fleet a sail will be seen climbing jerkily to the masthead, and hoarse
voices sound across the waters. It is only a minute or two after the first
evidence of activity before the whole fleet is tensely active. Blocks and
cordage are creaking, captains and mates shouting. Where there was a
forest of bare poles are soon hundreds of jibs and mainsails, rosy in the
first rays of the rising sun. The schooners that have been drifting idly,
are, as by magic, under weigh, cutting across each other's bows, slipping
out of menacing entanglements, avoiding collisions by a series of nautical
miracles. From a thousand galleys rise a thousand slender wreaths of
smoke, and the odors of coffee and of the bean dear to New England
fishermen, mingle with the saline zephyrs of the sea. The fleet is awake.

They who have sailed with the fleet say that one of the marvels of the
fisherman's mind is the unerring skill with which he will identify vessels
in the distant fleet, To the landsman all are alike--a group of somewhat
dingy schooners, not over trig, and apt to be in need of paint. But the
trained fisherman, pursing his eyes against the sun's glitter on the
waves, points them out one by one, with names, port-of-hail, name of
captain, and bits of gossip about the craft. As the mountaineer identifies
the most distant peak, or the plainsman picks his way by the trail
indistinguishable to the untrained eye, so the fisherman, raised from
boyhood among the vessels that make up the fleet, finds in each
characteristics so striking, so individual, as to identify the vessel
displaying them as far as a keen eye can reach.

[Illustration: "THE BOYS MARKED THEIR FISH BY CUTTING OFF THEIR TAILS"]

The fishing schooners, like the whalers, were managed upon principles of
profit-sharing. The methods of dividing the proceeds of the catch
differed, but in no sense did the wage system e