214 COUNTRY ESSAYS. 



maze like the Dsedalean dance on the shield of Achilles, where 

 the youths and maidens 



" At once rise, at once descend, 

 With well-taught feet ; now shape in oblique ways, 

 Confusedly regular, the moving maze : 

 Now forth at once, too swift for sight, they spring, 

 And undistinguish'd blend the flying ring. " * 



As we look on delighted, down flashes a bird on the waves 

 with its harsh scream and breaks up the aerial dance, while it 

 secures the little fish on which it feeds. The noddy, so familiar 

 to us from many narratives of voyage and shipwreck, is a mem- 

 ber of this pleasing family, Like the beautiful Kittiwake gulls, 

 the terns form the light troops of nature's army of larger gulls, 

 cormorants, and the like, wherewith she does battle against the 

 impurities and super-abundant life of the ocean. 



When well out of the Humber, with the Dimlington high 

 land on our left, the first " land-fall " usually made by vessels 

 bound for Hull or Grimsby, the Firefly bears down upon a 

 smack sailing out to the Dogger Bank. A boat is dropped and 

 two sailors board her, returning with a pailful of whelks. When 

 land and clouds are almost commingled behind us, the engines 

 are stopped, the Firefly suffered to drift, and all hands betake 

 themselves to fishing for cod with the whelks. Two large 

 hooks, depending from a cross arm of iron heavily weighted 

 with lead, are let down to the bottom with a line of small rope, 

 and before long a very respectable cod-fish is hauled up by one 

 of the crew. Let no delicate fly-fisher of the Test or Itchen 

 attempt this kind of sport. Play there is none, and the fish is 

 dragged up as quickly as possible hand over hand. Yet there 

 must be some skill required in detecting the bites of the cod 

 and hooking them, for the weight of the apparatus effectually 

 prevented any but the crew from catching these fish, and several 

 of them had gained experience from having served in Grimsby 



* Pope's Translation, II., xviii. 682. 



