re's where we got 'em--they can't hold it
on their lives. Now then, another dozen strokes and it's over. One,
two, three--quicker, Lord, quicker--six, seven--oh, now she's fair
flying--look at her leap. You blessed lobster, keep rowing and not
looking over your shoulder. We got to get the fish first."

A quarter mile of that with the foam ripping by us, and every man with
his blood like fire jumping to his oar, when the skipper leaped back
to the steering oar. "Stand by," he called, and then, "Now--over with
the buoy," and over it went, with the dory at hand and Tommie Clancy
right there to pick it up and hold it to windward. And then went the
seine over in huge armfuls. Just to see Long Steve throw that seine
was worth a trip South. And he was vain as a child of his strength
and endurance. "My, but look at him!" Clancy called out--"look at the
back of him!" "He's a horse," somebody else would have to say, and
"H-g-gh," Steve would grunt, and "H-g-gh" he would fill the air full
of tarred netting, "H-g-gh--pass them corks," and over it would go,
"H-g-gh," and the skipper would say, "That's the boy, Steve," and
Steve would heave to break his back right then and there. All the time
they were driving the seine-boat to its limit, and the skipper was
laying to the big steering oar, the longest of them all and taking a
strong man to handle it properly--laying to it, swinging from the
waist like a hammer-thrower, and the boat jumping to it. She came
jumping right for us in the dory in a little while. It doesn't take a
good gang long to put a quarter mile of netting around a school of
mackerel.

It was a pretty set he made. "Pretty, pretty," you could almost hear
the old seiners saying between their teeth, even as they were all
rowing with jaws set and never a let-up until the circle was
completed, when it was oars into the air and Clancy leaping from the
dory into the seine-boat to help purse up. "It's a raft if ever we get
'em," were his first words, and everybody that wasn't too breathless
said yes, it was a jeesly raft of fish.

"Purse in," it was then, and lively. And so we pursed in, hauling on
the running line in the lower edge of the seine, something as the
string around the neck of a tobacco bag is drawn tight. It was heavy
work of course, but everybody made light of it. We could not tell if
the fish were in it or not. The leaders might have dove when they felt
the twine against their noses and so escaped with the wh