282 Cod 



tion of a thing can make it real to one's senses. But 

 I very much doubt whether it is possible to make 

 any landsman realise what it means to ride at anchor 

 in the open ocean far out of sight of land, groping in 

 the unseen by the aid of what becomes, as in Disko 

 Troop, a real instinct, for a dearly won livelihood. 

 How can comfortable people ashore realise what it 

 means to be shut up in a tiny vessel, anchored out at 

 sea in the track of the swift, mighty, ocean-going 

 steamships ? Even on the clearest, most beautiful 

 night the little schooner, with her glimmering riding 

 light in the fore rigging, is such a tiny speck upon 

 the great lonely sea. But when the dense white veil 

 of the fog closes down in eddies of thickest cloud, so 

 that the bow of the little craft is not visible from her 

 stem, the sense of loneliness and of danger becomes 

 almost unbearably heightened. 



And strangely enough, whereas when it was clear 

 the ocean looked so wide that the chances of one vessel 

 meeting another to do her harm, seemed almost 

 impossibly remote, in the smother of the fog it is 

 almost equally impossible to avoid the conclusion 

 that your vessel, like a magnet, will draw the ocean 

 greyhound down upon you, and sweep you in one 

 age-long minute of agony out of the world of being. 

 Yes, it is an adventurous life, and a splendid set of 

 men are those who lead it. 



I have never been more astonished at the difference 

 between my preconceived notions and the reality, 

 than I was when, on a visit to Gloucester, Massachusetts, 

 the metropolis of the Cod-fishing industry, I saw the 

 fishermen ashore. Clean, well, even fashionably 

 dressed, gentlemanly, stalwart men. Perhaps I was 

 fortunate in coming across a picked lot, but there 

 they were, looking as unlike the conventional fisherman 



