t evening on
the island, holding the candle while he talked very close to my
face. I told him I had been well entertained by his family and
neighbours, and had hardly missed him. He went away, and half an
hour later opened the door again with the iron spoon which serves to
lift the latch, and came in, in a suit of white homespuns, and said
he must ask me to let him stretch out in the other bed, as there was
no place else for him to lie. I told him that he was welcome, and he
got into the other bed and lit his pipe. Then we had a long talk
about this place and America and the younger generations.

'There has been no one drowned on this island,' he said, 'for forty
years, and that is a great wonder, for it is a dangerous life. There
was a man--the brother of the man you were talking to when the
girls were dancing--was married to a widow had a public-house away
to the west of Ballydavid, and he was out fishing for mackerel, and
he got a great haul of them; then he filled his canoe too full, so
that she was down to the edge in the water, and a wave broke into
her when they were near the shore, and she went down under them. Two
men got ashore, but the man from this island was drowned, for his
oilskins went down about his feet, and he sank where he was.'

Then we talked about the chances of the mackerel season. 'If the
season is good,' he said, 'we get on well; but it is not certain at
all. We do pay four pounds for a net, and sometimes the dogfish will
get into it the first day and tear it into pieces as if you'd cut it
with a knife. Sometimes the mackerel will die in the net, and then
ten men would be hard set to pull them up into the canoe, so that if
the wind rises on us we must cut loose, and let down the net to the
bottom of the sea. When we get fish here in the night we go to
Dunquin and sell them to buyers in the morning; and, believe me, it
is a dangerous thing to cross that sound when you have too great a
load taken into your canoe. When it is too bad to cross over we do
salt the fish ourselves--we must salt them cleanly and put them in
clean barrels--and then the first day it is calm buyers will be out
after them from the town of Dingle.'

Afterwards he spoke of the people who go away to America, and the
younger generations that are growing up now in Ireland.

'The young people is no use,' he said. 'I am not as good a man as my
father was, and my son is growing up worse than I am.' Then he put
up his pipe on t