wishes 'ee luck then."

We all wished luck to the _Shooting Star_--to that cranky old boatload
of pluck, ill-luck, and ancient desperation.

Said Uncle Jake: "I'd rather see they come in wi' a boatload o' herring
than any boat along the beach. 'Tis a purty craft an' a purty crew, but
they du desarve it."

So said we all. 'Twas the least payment we could make for our
entertainment.

As soon as they were hauled up, Joe Barker lit his pipe, and, instead
of going to bed, he went west along the shore, and carried up and
sifted sand till dawn.

"Jest what he be fit for now," Uncle Jake remarked. "That'll get 'en
his bread an' baccy far sooner'n drifting for herring in thic _Shuteing
Star_."

But if we only could have looked into the _Shooting Star_ at sea. The
_Shooting Star of Seacombe_!

6

"Us got 'em at last then!" so we tell one another. We have caught the
catch of the season.

For three or four days the hauls had been fairly good. Elsewhere on the
coast, the snow, sleet, wind and wrecks continued. Here alone, in
Seacombe Bay, it got colder and colder, and the sea became calmer and
sunnier. "Tis like old days," Uncle Jake said while he spliced a new
cut-rope to the drifter. "The herring be come again, in bodies, and the
price be up. Us'll hae 'em."

[Sidenote: _PAYING CALLS AT SEA_]

An hour before sunset on Saturday afternoon we were shoved off the
beach--Tony, John, and myself. Every article of underclothing in
duplicate, a couple of guernseys and a coat or two were next to
nakedness. We were bloated with clothes, but that northerly air, it
seemed to be fingering our very skins. Yet there was hardly wind enough
to fill the sail. Ricketty-rock, ricketty-rock, went the sweeps between
the thole-pins, as we rowed to the fishing ground six miles or so away.
Not one of us wished to shirk the heavy work. 'Twas indeed our only
source of warmth. The sun was setting. The moon began to rise. The sea
was all of a glimmer and glitter.

"I should think we was nearly where they fish be," said John.

"Bit farther," said Tony. "Us'll drift back 'long when the flid tide
makes."

"Du as yu'm minded tu."

"Steer her a little bit in," directed Tony.

"A little bit out," directed John the next minute.

It was a middle course that turned out so happily.

We shot our nets--seven forty-fathom nets we had aboard--between the
dying sunlight and the rising moon. Very still was the sea, and quiet,
except where the othe