184 SOME BIRDS OF SOUTH AFRICA 



empty lighters and taking back full ones, or vice versa. 

 There was no time lost with them, returned from one 

 ship, they would hitch on to the empty lighters which 

 were heaving with the swell alongside the jetty and 

 nosing against its pillars like lazy fish, and before these 

 old hulks fairly knew what was happening they would 

 be jerked forward by the busy tug, in a most sum- 

 mary and undignified manner. When they had been 

 towed perhaps a hundred yards or so out to sea, and 

 realised fully the indignity put upon them, they would 

 take advantage of a temporary standstill in the tug's 

 progress while it steamed bravely over the crest of 

 a wave, to make an ill-natured dig at its stern, which 

 the tug always managed skilfully to evade ; tug and 

 lighter were soon intermittently lost to view amid the 

 large dull-green rollers. 



I was rather amused one evening about sunset, when 

 the sea happened to be calm, to see these same lighters, 

 apparently so helpless during the daytime, don brown- 

 coloured sails and do a little cruising on their own 

 account. The smart-looking tugs had been anchored 

 for the night, and there were some half-dozen of these 

 clumsy boats spreading their wings like moths at twi- 

 light, and seemingly continuing the day's work in a 

 mild and leisurely way. The sea though, as I have 

 said, was reasonably calm, or doubtless the lighters 

 would not have been allowed out by themselves. 



Sometimes a gunboat would come into the Bay, 

 taking her place among the large liners which formed 

 the outer row of vessels, and at night she would practise 

 with her searchlight, turning it first on to one ship and 

 then on to another, afterwards flashing it up to one of 



