ole school
following after, or they might have taken no alarm and stayed in.

So we pursed in, not knowing whether we were to have a good haul with
a hundred or a hundred and fifty dollars apiece at the end of it, or
whether we would have our work for nothing. All hands kept up the
pretence of joking, of course, but everybody was anxious enough. It
was more than the money--it was fisherman's pride. Were we to get into
New York and have it telegraphed on to Gloucester for everybody that
knew us to read and talk about--landing the first mackerel of the
year? We watched while the circle narrowed and the pool inside grew
shallower. Somebody said, "There's one," and we could see the shine of
it, and another--and another--and then the whole mass of them rose
flipping. They lashed the water into foam, rushed around the edges,
nosed the corks of the seine. I don't think myself that mackerel are
particularly intelligent, take them generally; but at times they seem
to know--these fellows, at least, seemed to know they were gone and
they thrashed about in fury. A mackerel is a handsome fish any time,
but to see him right you want to see him fresh-seined. They whipped
the water white now--tens of thousands of them. I don't believe that
the oldest seiner there didn't feel his heart beat faster--the first
mackerel of the year. "And Lord knows, maybe a couple of hundred
barrels," and the skipper's eyes shone--it meant a lot to him. And
some of the men began to talk like children, they were so pleased.

X

WE LOSE OUR SEINE

Two hundred barrels the skipper had said, but long before we were all
pursed up we knew that five hundred barrels would never hold the fish
in that seine. The size of that school filled us with joy and yet it
was the very size of it that caused us our trouble. It was too big for
the seine, and when they began to settle down and take the twine with
them the trouble began for us. No bit of twine ever made to be handled
from a seine-boat was big enough to hold that school of fish when they
began to go down.

The skipper was awake to it early and signalled for the vessel to come
alongside. So the Johnnie stood over to us, and Hurd, pushing the
spare dory over with Moore's help, came jumping with it to the side of
the seine where I was alone in the first dory. He hadn't even stopped
to get into his oilskins, he was in such a hurry. By the skipper's
orders I had made fast some of the corks to the thwarts in