and everything not black is
grey, except where the white surf beats upon the outermost ledge. Then
Broken Rocks have personality. A sinister spirit rises out of them with
the heave of the sea. It is as if some black mood, some great monotony
of strife, were closing in around one. On the sea wall, in the
sunshine, I used to wonder why Uncle Jake calls Broken Rocks a terr'ble
place. Now I do not. He works there by night.

We peered out from the beach underneath the cliffs. Nobody had
forestalled us. Uncle Jake was pleased. He laughed hoarsely, and the
echo of it was not unlike the natural noises of the place. "Us'll make
a start there," he said, pointing to a ledge between which and
ourselves was a wide sheet of water. "Yu follow me an' feel for a
foothold wi' your pole. _Don't_ yu step afore yu've felt."

Into the water he went; seemed, indeed, to run across it. "Be 'ee wet?"
he asked when I stepped out the other side.

"Half way up my thighs!"

"Yu hadn't no need to get wet so far up as your knees. I didn't. An' yu
might ha' gone in there over your head. Yu use your pole, skipper. Feel
afore yu steps. I'll set 'ee your two nets for a beginning."

With his pole he felt the depth of the water around the ledge. Then he
dropped the nets down, edging them carefully under the overhanging
weed, and placed the sticks on the rock above. "Don't yu forget where
yu sets your nets. Yu won't _see_'em. An' when yu hauls up, go gently,
like so, else off goes all they master prawns, d'rec'ly they feels a
jerk.... Leave 'em down a couple o' minutes.... But there, yu knows,
don' 'ee? Us won't catch much till the tide turns. They prawns knows
when 'tis beginning to flow so well as yu an' me. Yu work this yer, an'
along easterly. I be going farther out."

[Sidenote: _PRAWNS_]

When I hauled up my first net I heard the faint clicketty noise--like
paper scratching metal--of three or four prawns jumping about inside.
My hand had to chase them many times round the net. One jumped over;
one fell through. Nothing is more difficult to withdraw from a net than
prawns, except it be a lobster, flipping itself about, hardly visible,
and striking continually with its nippers. There was a lobster in the
second net. It had to go into the same pocket as the prawns. It was
something of an adventure afterwards to put a hand into the pocketful
of lobster claws and prawn spines.

Working eastward and outward, plunging in to the water or sliding with