302 ALONGSHORE v 



increasing to half a gale, was strong enough to 

 carry her clear of her own nets. Then the shoot- 

 ing of the net began. The end of the cable, made 

 fast to a big wooden log, was passed over the bow 

 stanchions. The net itself came up out of the 

 hold with lanyards, two or three fathoms long 

 and several fathoms apart, fixed to the corked 

 head-rope that runs along the top of the nets. 

 As the net went over the roller into the sea, the 

 lanyards were held, passed along for'ard, and 

 made fast with clove-hitches to the cable. Mid- 

 way between the net lanyards other lanyards, with 

 black keg-buoys attached to them, were also bent 

 on to the cable. Every kilometre was marked by 

 a tall numbered buoy, painted in red and white 

 stripes and carrying a flag. Whereas in our small 

 drifters the buoy lanyards are made fast to the 

 head-rope itself, and the head-rope takes the strain 

 of the nets; in the steam-drifter the lanyards of 

 the buoys above, and of the head-rope below, were 

 both made fast to the stout cable, and the cable 

 took all the strain between boat and nets. Down 

 in the sea, therefore, was a vertical wall of net six 

 fathoms [twelve yards] high, its foot-rope near 

 the bottom, its head-rope about seven fathoms 

 beneath the surface; above that a row of net 



