mackerel hooker, on shore a loafer 'ready to lend a hand,' and in the
house a sort of male Cinderella. It is far pleasanter, I find, to be a
small wheel in the machine than to remain seated on a mound of pounds,
shillings and pence--beflunkeyed, as if in a soulless hotel!

[Sidenote: _THE EARLY CUP O' TAY_]

Tony cannot fill his spare time by reading: it makes his long-sighted
eyes smart. On account of that, and of nights at sea, with rest taken
when and where possible, he has developed an amazing talent for
'putting it away'; that is, for sleeping. He can turn out perfectly
well at any hour, if need be, but at ordinary times he is most content
to follow somebody else's first. I on my part, sleeping indifferently
well, wake usually before dawn, and greatly dislike waiting for an
early cup o' tay.

About half-past four I jump out of bed, creep downstairs and chop wood.
That warms me. Then with a barbaric glee, I scrape out the ashes,
sending clouds of dust over the guernseys and boots that have been set
near the fire to dry. No matter; being light and fire-dry, it will
brush off the one and shake out of the other. People who never light
fires at dawn can have no idea of the exhilaration to be obtained from
a well-laid, crackling, flaming fire.

Tony appears at the door, half-dressed, yawning and stretching his arms
on high. "Yu an't been an' made tay, have 'ee?" he says with delighted
certainty. The cups are filled. He takes up Mam 'Idger's cup and
returns with the paper roll of 'Family Biscuits.' We forage for
tit-bits, feed standing, yawn again, and go out to 'see what to make
o'it.'

Unless the sea is broken by the wind, there is about it just before
dawn a peculiar creeping clamminess. It seems but half awake, like
ourselves. It has no welcome for us. "Can't you wait," it seems to say,
"till I begin to sparkle?"

Tony looks out over. "Had us better tu?" he asks with a shiver.

"Why not?"

"Shove her down then. There's macker out there!"

By the time the sun is rising (it never rises twice the same) south of
the easternmost headland, Tony has worked himself into a tear over
self-tangling lines, and has been laughed out of it again. We are
perhaps a mile or two out, and if the mackerel are biting well, we are
hauling them in, swiftly, silently, grimly; banging them off the hook;
going _Tsch!_ if they fall back into the sea; cutting baits from fish
not dead. If, however, they are not on the feed, we sing bla