510 REPORT OF COMMISSIONER OF FISH AND FISHERIES. 



before the poor bunkers had fairly apprehended their danger, they were 

 caught in a bag whose invisible folds held a cubic acre or two of water. 



This was sport! I had not bargained for the hard work to come, to 

 the unsportive character of which my blistered palms soon testified. 



None of the fish were to be seen. Every fin of them had sunk to the 

 bottom. Whether we had caught ten or ten thousand remained to be 

 proved. Now, lifting the net is no easy job. The weight of nearly ten 

 thousand square yards of seine is alone immense, but when it is wet 

 with cold sea-water, and held back by the pushing of thousands of en- 

 ergetic little noses, to pull it into a rocking boat implies hard work. 

 However, little by little it came over the gunwales, the first thing being 

 to bring up the great sinker and ascertain that the closing of the purse 

 at the bottom had been properly executed. Yard by yard the cork line 

 was contracted, and one after another the frightened captives began to 

 appear, some folded into a wrinkle or caught by the gills in a torn mesh 

 (and such were thrown back), until at last the bag was reduced to only 

 a few feet in diameter, and the menhaden were seen, a sheeny, gray, 

 struggling mass, which bellied out the net under the cork lines and 

 under the boats, in vain anxiety to pass the curious barrier which on 

 every side hemmed them in, and in leaping efforts to escape the crowd- 

 ing of their thronging fellows. How they gleamed, like fish of jewels 

 and gold ! The sunshine, finding its way down through the clear green 

 water, seemed not to reflect from their iridescent scales, but to penetrate 

 them all, and illumine their bodies from within with a wonderful chang- 

 ing flame. Gleaming, shifting, lambent waves of color flashed and paled 

 before my entranced eyes ; gray as the fishes turned their backs, sweep- 

 ing brightly back with a thousand brilliant tints as they showed their 

 sides ; soft, undefined, and mutable, down there under the green glass 

 of the sea j while, to show them the better, myriads of minute medusse 

 hurried hither and thither, glittering like phosphorescent lanterns in 

 gossamer frames and transparent globes. 



All possible slack having now been taken in, the steamer approaches, 

 and towing us away to deeper water, for we are drifting toward a lee 

 shore, comes to a stand-still, and the work of loading begins. The cork 

 line is lifted up and made fast to the steamer's bulwarks, to which the 

 boats have already attached themselves at one end, holding together at 

 the other. This crowds all the bunkers together in a mass between the 

 two boats and the steamer's side, where the water boils with the churn- 

 ing of thousands of active fins. A twenty-foot oar is plunged into the 

 mass, but will not suffice to sound its living depths. Then a great dip- 

 per of strong netting on an iron hoop is let down by tackle from the 

 yard-arm, dipped into the mass under the guidance of a man on deck 

 who holds the handle, the pony-engine puffs and shakes, and away aloft 

 for an instant swings a mass of bunkers, only to be upset and fall like 

 so much sparkling water into the resounding hold. 



