CHAPTER LXIV 



"GANTS" 



In the grey autumn mornings, as the North Sea luggers 

 are hauling their nets, filled with blue and silvery herring, 

 from the cold water, amid the wild laka-laka-lakas of the 

 gulls, the craa-craa-craas of the gannet will be conspicuous — 

 as are the birds themselves — and a welcome augury they 

 are to the North Sea fishermen, who read in their pre- 

 sence " herring about here ! " The fishermen tell of two 

 "gants" — the black and white gant — probably the im- 

 mature and adult birds ; and though they welcome them, 

 still, when the nets are being drawn in, and the craaing 

 gants go in a body, some hundred yards off, to lift and 

 strip a full net with their powerful bills, robbing the silvery 

 booty, they are not altogether pleased, and smile with satis- 

 faction as some incautious youngster gets entangled in the 

 lint, and is dragged aboard drowned. And when his catch 

 runs to five or six lasts of fish, there will be hundreds 

 of "gants" and gulls robbing him of his well-earned 

 harvest. And perhaps it is this habit of picking up the 

 nets, and " deeving inter 'em," that has suggested as a 

 revenge the not uncommon practice, when they hang idly 

 over the fishing-boats, of nailing a fish to a board, and 

 casting it upon the troubled water, when the "gant," who is 

 flying a hundred yards above, closes his wings, and plunges 

 down, striking the board with such force that either his bill 

 transfixes the board, and he is a grotesque prisoner, or, 

 more commonly, his neck is broken from the blow. And the 

 fishermen laugh a laugh, which is a sweet revenge. But the 



