an bright little town is
a ruin on a salt marsh.

Returning in house, we made hot tea, and laughed.

3

We had, as it were, said _Good-Night_ to the town, though it was only
half-past three in the afternoon. Most lazy we must have looked as we
sailed off to the fishing ground with a light fair wind, NNW. John's
young muscular frame was leaning against the mainmast, like a
magnificent statue dressed for the moment in fishermen's rig. Tony aft
was lounging across the tiller. He fits the tiller, for he is older and
bent and his eyes are deeply crowsfooted with watching. Both of them
showed the same splendid contrast of navy-blue jerseys against sea eyes
and spray-stung red and russet skins. I was lying full length along the
midship thwart. We lopped along lazily, about three knots to the hour.

[Sidenote: _HERRING DRIFTING_]

As we lounged and smoked, each of us sang a different song, more or
less in tune. It sounded not unmelodious upon the large waters. At
intervals we asked one another where the 'gert bodies of herrings' had
gone off to. Eastwards, westwards, to the offing, or down to the bottom
to spawn?

So near the land we were, yet so far from it in feeling. There, to the
NE. was the little town, sunlit and brilliantly white, with the church
tower rising in the middle and the heather-topped cloud-capped hills
behind. There around the bay, were the red cliffs, crossed by deep
shadows and splotched with dark green bushes. The land was there. We
were to sea. The water, which barely gurgled beneath the bows of the
drifter, was rushing up the beaches under the cliffs with a
myriad-sounding rattle. Gulls, bright pearly white or black as
cormorants, according as the light struck them, were our only
companions. The little craft our kingdom was--twenty-two foot long by
eight in the beam,--and a pretty pickle of a kingdom!

Mixed up together in the stern were spare cork buoys, rope ends, sacks
of ballast and Tony. Midships were the piled up nets and buoys. For'ard
were more ballast bags and rope ends, some cordage, old clothes, sacks,
paper bags of supper, four bottles of cold tea, two of paraffin oil and
one of water, the riding lamp and a very old fish-box, half full of
pebbles, for cooking on. All over the boat were herring scales and
smelly blobs of roe. It's sometime now since the old craft was scraped
and painted.

But the golden light of the sunset gilded everything, and the probable
catch was what concern