130 ALONGSHORE m 



likes o'us an' asking questions. They knows, 

 seems so, an' the hkes o'us, what's had the experi- 

 ence o'it, don't. Why, I reckon that if you got a 

 fleet o' nets you'm so much meshed in 'em as ever 

 the fish be. . . .' 



A fleet of nets, indeed, is pretty nearly one 

 man's work, though some seasons they hardly earn 

 enough to pay for barking, and all the time, 

 whether ashore or boated, they are wearing them- 

 selves out. When they come to the beach, and 

 are drawn out of the maker's sacks, they look like 

 ropes of cream-coloured lace, so fine is the yarn 

 until two or three lots of bark have been boiled 

 into it. Turned to a rich shade of terra-cotta by 

 their first barking, they are put into their head- 

 ropes and boated; and thenceforward they must 

 never be let out of mind. For not only have rents 

 in them to be mended before they get bigger — 

 ticklish work that not every fisherman can do well 

 in these days of machine-made nets — but they have 

 to be spread out in the sun, turned over like hay, 

 and dried, sufficiently often to keep them from 

 rotting, yet not so often as to damage them even 

 more by hauling them about on the shingle. At 

 the end of each season, before they are barked and 

 bagged, they have to be washed by two men 



