158 ALONGSHORE 



ni 



for, and into them the catch Is sorted: first and 

 foremost the mackerel, then almost always some 

 flat-fish, and afterwards specimens of nearly all 

 the commoner fish that swim in our inshore waters 

 — bass, pollack, pout, gurnard, whiting, mullet, 

 thornbacks, conger, sand - eels, smelts, squid, 

 lobsters, wild crabs innumerable, and even once 

 in a way a small salmon that has come to go 

 up the river, and has found it barred with shingle. 

 Not often is the catch so great that men have 

 to go into the water and lift the bunt, or the seine 

 cannot be brought ashore at all unless most of the 

 fish are scooped out of it into a boat with skim- 

 nets. The chackle at such times is indescribable, 

 made up very largely of contradictory orders and 

 heavy-booted cuss-words. For seining hereabout 

 is not a job done really fitty. It cannot be. It is 

 too chancy, too much of a rush. Nobody can 

 foretell the exact moment of the fish playing up, 

 and, when they do come, the seine-boat's crew, if 

 it has a complete crew of six or eight, are seldom 

 altogether on the spot. Therefore the help of any 

 bare-kneed strapper who runs down to the ropes 

 must be accepted. Among them is pretty sure to 

 be a blaremouth, whose tongue no one can still. 

 And there is no proper skipper in sole charge. 



