hen you turn in to your hard wooden bunk and pull
a rough blanket over you to keep out the cold."

"But you don't keep the fish long on board, do you, uncle?" asked Ben.

"No, no, my lad. A fast-sailing boat that we call a cutter comes and
goes from shore to the fleet of trawlers, and takes the fish off;
backwards and forwards it goes, and away goes the fish directly it's
sold--up to London, or elsewhere, where there's millions of mouths
waiting for it. Ah! I well remember when the smack-boys, or the
fisher-boys, would have to help to take the fish off in a boat to the
cutter on a dark night, and many a time the poor fellows would get
capsized, and afterwards go down in that cold North Sea. Hard work, my
lad, hard fare; and in danger half the time. Things are better now,
perhaps; but we're out longer a good deal, and there's a big fleet that
belongs to a company that keeps the men and the boys out for weeks at a
time, and fetches all that they catch, so that by the time they get
ashore the poor fellows are pretty near worn out. Of course the cutter
takes out food for 'em, but it can't take 'em out warmth and dry
clothes, and snug beds, and every year there is some of the vessels
lost, and perhaps all on board lost too."

"Well," says Ben, looking very solemn; "there's some that get lost on
land too. They fall ill or get a bad cough, or have some sort of
accident with machinery or something, you know, uncle; but we're obliged
to work all the same."

"Well said, my boy Ben," said the fisherman. "The thing is to do our
duty, whatever it may be, and to pray that we may be made able to do it.
Some of our smack-boys go to school when they're at home, and there's a
mission-room where they go to hear and to read the Bible, and have teas
and singing, and various treats, and some fun too sometimes. Yes, things
are better than they used to be in my young days."

It was a long journey to Yarmouth, but Ben greatly enjoyed it, and when
he and his uncle got there they went at once to have a look at the sea.

Such a great broad expanse of soft yellowish sandy beach, where the
great waves came rolling in! such a long pier where people were fishing
with hooks and lines, and sometimes catching a codling or a whiting!
"I'll go and have a try at that by-and by," said Ben; "but what are
those great wooden towers that look like a sort of big puzzle stuck up
on end?"

"They're the look-out towers, Ben. Now, do you see that cutter over