on the
bottom--he, almost without thinking, does precisely what is needful,
and another mackerel is hooked long before I should have brought the
boat up into the wind again.

[Sidenote: _FISHERMEN'S SKILL_]

The greatest charm of sailing lies in this: that it is the art of
making a boat move by dodging, by taking advantage of, a score of
possible dangers. Except when running before the wind, it is the
capsizing-power of the wind which propels the boat. The fisherman is an
artist none the less because his skill seems partly inborn; because he
sails his boat airily and carelessly, yet grimly--for life and the
bread and cheese of it. The 'poor fisherman' for whom appeals to
charity are made, as if he were a hardworking, chance-fed, picturesque
but ignorant and helpless creature, is more than a trader, more than a
skilled labourer in a factory. To a peculiar extent he sells himself as
well as his skill and his goods. He lives contingently on his own life.

7

All that day the wind out in the Channel was blowing fresh from the
sou'west, as we could see by the blackness of the horizon and the
saw-edged sea-line beyond the outer headlands. During the afternoon, a
ground-sea crept into the bay, silently rolling in like an unbidden
unannounced guest who will not name his business. And when, at the turn
of the tide, the breeze in-shore also backed to the sou'west, a busy
lop was superposed on the long heaving swell.[8] About half-past seven,
the Widgers were gathered together near their boats.

[8] A _lop_ is a short choppy sea raised by the immediate action
of a breeze. A _swell_ consists of the long heaving waves which
follow, and sometimes precede, a storm. The diverse action of
different sorts of waves on a shingle beach is interesting. Short
seas (_i.e._ short from crest to crest), even when they are very
high, have not nearly the force or _run_ of a long, though much
lower ground-swell; that is they neither run so far up the beach
nor so greatly endanger the boats. All kinds of waves possess
more run at spring than at neap tides. A lop on a swell at spring
tide is therefore the most troublesome of all to the fishermen.

"What time be it high tide?" asked Granfer. "'Bout ten, en' it?"

"Had us better haul the boats up over?" said Tony. "Tides be dead, en't
they?"

"No-o-o," replied Uncle Jake. "They 'en making."

"'Tis goin' to blow, I tell 'ee," said G