d?"

"Yes. We mustn't mind weather when the market's to be considered. Tell
me now, sir--you've got time, haven't you, sir? Talkin' of the market,
and I've been nearly dead, and not out o' the muck yet--does the people
know what us chaps gets for fish?"

"They never think. The fish comes, and the milk comes, and they pay the
fishmonger's bill and the milkman's, and they think one's the same as
the other, my man."

"Eh! I was thinkin' about a gentleman as came from this Mission vessel
aboard of us. He saw our twelve o'clock haul, and he says, 'Bad breeze
last night, my man. Did you work through it?' Well, there was nothing
much of a wind--just enough to make us reef her; so I answers, and he
says, 'I suppose this is your night's work. Now, what is your share?' So
I said my share would likely be tenpence. Well, he gives a reg'lar
screech; and then I reckoned up the price of all the lot as well as I
could guess, and he screeched again. 'Why,' says he, 'old Mother Baubo,
that keeps the shop in my district at home, would charge me eight
shillings for that turbot, four-and-six for that, eightpence for each of
those sixty haddocks, and nobody knows what for the rest.' Now, I've
thought of that gentleman and his screech many a time since, and when I
felt the light a-comin' to my eyes here, I thought again. Do you think I
shall die, sir? Excuse me."

"Die! No. Fact is, I'm too good-natured a doctor. I shall have to stop
you from talking. Die! We'll make a man of you, and send you on board
soon. Go on, I can stay another five minutes." "Well, sir, when I
thought of death, I thought what people would say if they knew how much
I got for risking this smash. That night I was over the rail on to the
trawl-beam twice; I was at the pumps an hour; I pulled and hauled with
both arms raw, and the snow freezing with the salt as soon as it came on
my ulcers, and then I got the smash. And all for about eightpence. And
that screeching gentleman told me as how his Mother Baubo, as he calls
her, drives a broom and two horses, or a horse and two brooms--I'm
mixed. No, 'twas a land-oh and two horses, and a broom and one horse.
And I gets eightpence for a-many hours and a smash. I never mind the
fellows that tells us on Sundays when we're ashore to rise and assirk
our rights or something, but there's a bit wrong somewhere, sir. It
don't seem the thing."

"Well, you see people would say you needn't be a fisherman; you weren't
forced to come."