keeping up a
constant stream of necessary counsel.

"Careful! Don't jerk so, or you'll catch your hooks in the gunwale.
There's a good-sized one! Don't try to lift him aboard without the gaff.
Press your hook down and back! Don't yank it sideways like that; you'll
only hook him harder. Coil that line away more evenly, or we'll have a
bad mess when we come to bait up. Don't lose that fellow! There he goes!
Be more careful of the next one!"

Needful though it was, this quickfire of advice rasped on Percy's
temper. The unaccustomed work tired him badly. He was soon conscious of
a pain in his shoulders and across the back of his neck; his wrists
ached. Every now and then the hard, wiry line slipped off the nippers
and sawed across his smarting fingers or palms. But pride kept him
doggedly pulling.

A dozen hake of various sizes lay behind him in the pen when a flat,
kite-shaped fish, four feet long, with a caricature of a human face
beneath its head, came scaling up through the water.

"What's that?" he gasped in amazement.

"Skate!"

"Shall I keep him?"

"Keep him? No! Unless you want to eat him yourself."

Bunglingly Percy tried to dismiss his unwelcome catch, but he made slow
work of extricating the deeply swallowed hook. Jim had stopped the
_Barracouta_ a few feet off. With the agony that an expert feels at the
unskilful butchery of a task by an amateur, he watched his mate's
awkward attempts. At last he could stand it no longer.

"Come aboard the sloop, Whittington," he ordered. "I'll finish pulling
the trawl."

Percy obeyed sullenly. He had almost reached his limit of physical
endurance, and he was only too glad of relief for his smarting skin and
aching muscles. Fishing was a miserable business, and he wanted no part
of it; on that he was fully decided. But even if a job is unpleasant, a
man would rather resign than be discharged. Jim's abruptness hurt his
pride; the slight rankled.

From the _Barracouta_ he somewhat enviously watched Spurling deftly
unhook the skate. The remainder of the trawl was pulled in in silence.
Percy kept the sloop at a distance that discouraged speech, closing the
gap only when Jim signaled that he wished to discharge his cargo. By ten
o'clock the last hook was reached, anchor and buoy taken aboard, and
the _Barracouta_, with two thousand pounds of fish heaped in her kids
and towing astern in the dory, headed for Tarpaulin Island.

The trip home was a glum one. Two or three