18 THE UNAPPRECIATED FISHER FOLK. 
at the paying-over of the nets, speedily fall asleep, and 
enjoy an hour or two of “blessed rest.” 
But the skipper, who may himself be either the owner of 
the boat or hold a share in it, seldom sleeps ; he is all too 
anxious about the venture, and sits throughout the silent 
watches of the night speculating on the number of “crans” 
of herring that he may see brought into the boat when the 
hour of hauling in the nets arrives. Before that time 
however his curiosity as to the good or bad fortune of the 
night may have culminated in a desire to see whether his 
nets have been so fortunate as to hit the shoal, and so he 
pulls in a few yards of the floating fabric, to see if there be 
fish ; or mayhap he may be tempted to examine the nets 
attached to a neighbouring boat, to find out what degree of 
fortune has attended it. Sometimes it happens that after 
the nets have been shot, and the boat has been drifting 
with the tide for an hour or two, there are no signs of the 
shoal having been hit upon, so that a new departure 
becomes necessary, and the whole of the labour has to be 
incurred a second time; the nets have to be hauled on 
board, the boat rowed to another pitch, where the huge 
fabric of capture is again cast into the waters in search of 
prey : again the men lay themselves down to their rest ; 
again the boat, with the watchful skipper at the helm, floats 
about for an hour of two, when comes the final test of the 
night’s fortunes. Let us assume that success has at length 
been achieved, and that the fifty or sixty barrels of fish 
which have been enmeshed adds to the labour of the en- 
terprise. Two miles length of netting,’often enough heavily 
laden with newly-caught herrings, have to be hauled on 
board, the fish have to be shaken or picked from the 
meshes, and the boat, wind or no wind, has to make its 
