to row,
for hours perhaps, with heavy 16-20 ft. sweeps. Moreover, if the sea
makes, or a ground swell rises, the least mistake in beaching a boat
will cause it to sheer round, capsize, and wash about in the breakers
with the crew most probably beneath it. Yarns are told of arms and legs
appearing, of a horrible tortured face appearing, while the upturned
boat washed about in the undertow, and those ashore were powerless to
help. There is nothing the fishermen dread so much. One of them owns to
leaving the beach when he has seen a boat running in on a very rough
sea, so that he might not endure witnessing what he could not
prevent.--He peeped however.

These risks need considering, not in order to exaggerate the dangers of
drifting in open beach boats--in point of fact, accidents seldom do
happen,--but to show what skill is habitually exercised, what a touch
and go with the sea it is.

Sundown is the time for shooting nets. Eight to fourteen are carried
for mackerel, six to ten for herrings--the scantier the fish, the
greater the number of nets. At Seacombe they are commonly forty fathoms
in length along the headrope which connects them all, and five fathoms
deep. Stretching far away from the boat, as it drifts up and down
Channel with the tides, is a line, perhaps a thousand yards long, of
cork buoys. From these hang the lanyards[16] which support the headrope,
from the headrope hang perpendicularly the nets themselves. Judgment is
needed in shooting a fleet of nets. They may get foul of the bottom or
of another boat's fleet. When, on account of careless shooting or
tricks of the tide, the nets of several boats become entangled, there
is great confusion, and the cursing is loud.

[16] For herrings the lanyards may be of such a length that the
foot of the net almost touches the sea-bottom. For mackerel,
which is a surface and midwater fish, they are much shorter, so
that the headrope lies just below the top of the water.

Nets shot, the fishermen make fast the road for'ard; sup, smoke, sing,
creep under the cutty, and sleep with one eye open.

Sometimes they are too wet to sleep; often in the winter it is too
cold.

Afterwards, the laborious hauling in--one man at the headrope and the
other at the foot. Contrary to a very general impression, the fish are
not enclosed within the net, as in seining or in pictures of the
miraculous draught of fishes. They prod their snouts into the meshes,
a