A NIGHT ON GUILLIAM. 251 



sunk into silence as dead as that which had preceded 

 it. 



' An hour before sunrise, I was somewhat disheartened 

 to find the view on every side bounded by a dense low 

 bank of fog, which hung over the water, while the central 

 firmament remained blue and cloudless. The neighbour- 

 ing boats appeared through the mist huge misshapen 

 things, manned by giants. We commenced hauling, 

 and found in one of the nets a small rock cod and a 

 half-starved whiting, which proved the whole of our 

 draught. I was informed by the fishermen, that even 

 when the shoal is thickest on the Guilliam, so close does 

 it keep by the bank, that not a solitary herring is to be 

 caught a gunshot from the edge on either side. 



1 We rowed up to the other boats, few of whom had 

 been more successful in their last haul than ourselves, 

 and none equally so in their first. The mist prevented 

 us from ascertaining by known landmarks the position 

 of the bank, which we at length discovered in a manner 

 that displayed much of the peculiar art of the fisherman. 

 The depth of the water and the nature of the bottom, 

 showed us that it lay to the south. A faint tremulous 

 heave of the sea, which was still calm, was the only re- 

 maining vestige of the gale which had blown from the 

 west in the early part of the night, and this heave, to- 

 gether with the current, which at this stage of the flood 

 runs in a south-western direction, served as our compass. 

 We next premised how far our boat had drifted down 

 the frith with the ebb-tide, and how far she had been 

 carried back again by the flood. We then turned her 

 bows in the line of the current, and in rather less than 

 half an hour were, as the lead informed us, on the eastern 

 extremity of Guilliam, where we shot our nets for the 

 third time. 



