them on
top of the engine-room casing, and got up with the master. He had just
ordered the ship to be put over to a trawler in sight. With the seas so
swift and ponderous I completely forgot the cold wind in watching the two
lively ships being manoeuvred till they were within earshot. When the
engines were stopped the steering had to be nicely calculated, or erratic
waves brought them dangerously close, or else took them out of call. Our
new friend had not seen "our lot," but had left a fleet with an unknown
house-flag ten miles astern. We surged forward again.

We steamed for two hours, and then the pattern of a trawler's smoke was
seen ahead traced on a band of greenish brilliance which divided the sea
from the sky. Almost at once other faint tracings multiplied there. In
a few minutes we could make out plainly within that livid narrow outlet
between the sea and the heavy clouds a concourse of midget ships.

"There they are," breathed the skipper after a quick inspection through
his glasses.

In half an hour we were in the midst of a fleet of fifty little steamers,
just too late to take our place as carrier to them for London's daily
market. As we steamed in, another carrier, which had left London after
us, hoisted her signal pennant, and took over that job.

While still our ship was under way, boats put out from the surrounding
trawlers, and converged on us for our outward cargo, the empty
fish-trunks. That intense band of light which had first betrayed the
smoke of the fleet eroded upwards into the low, slaty roof of nimbus till
the gloom was dissolved to the zenith. The incubus vanished; the sun
flooded us. At last only white feathers were left in the sky. I felt I
had known and loved these trawlers for years. All round us were ships'
boats, riding those sweeping seas in a gyrating and delirious lunacy; and
in each were two jovial fishermen, who shouted separate reasons to our
skipper for "the week off" he had taken.

These boats came at us like a swarm of assailants, swooping downhill on
us, swerving, recoiling, and falling away, rising swiftly above us again
for a charge, and then careering at us with abandon on the next declivity
of glass. A boat would hesitate above us, poised and rocking on the
snowy ridge of an upheaval, and vanish as the _Windhover_ canted away.
Then we rolled towards her, and there she was below us, in a smooth and
transient hollow. Watching for their chances, snatched o