244f FIELD AND FERN. 



mutton ; so we had settled to have a day with him 

 among his salmon nets on the coast of Fife. Some 

 caravans bound to the Dundee Fair had to be wheeled 

 out of the packet-boat, and she was soon returning 

 to Newport, and its river bank of " Pluck ye Crow/ 5 

 Mr. Speedie can stand by his nets like a Stoic, and 

 see shot after shot returning void on a long summer 

 day ; but that seals should venture to claim a divi- 

 dend of the salmon pricks him to the very quick. Some 

 of them have had the temerity to venture up as far 

 as Stanley; but " Cowie Jock" was on the look out 

 for them after that feat, and impaled no less than 

 four at Higham Bank, half-way up the Tay, with his 

 spikes, in one tide. None were visible off Dogger 

 .Bank that morning, or farther away among those 

 dreary wreck ribs ; but, " There's Cowie !" said his 

 natural enemy, as we drove across Drumley sands. 

 There he was sure enough, with his black head 

 bobbing up and down in the ebb tide of the channel, 

 and chaffing Captain Maitland Douglas's fisher- 

 men. 



One of them, 50 stone in weight, was taken out of 

 the salmon trade not many months before, and in his 

 rage at losing his licence without any compensation, 

 he bit the foot-spar of the boat in twain, as if it were 

 a tobacco-pipe. " Fifty pints of oil came out of him, 

 the rascal, and the men got 3 for it." They chase 

 the salmon into a chamber of the net, and then swoop 

 down on to him like an eagle, and fish him out with 

 their claws. An hereditary craftsman at the trade 



