126 WILD LIFE ON A NORFOLK ESTUARY 



6.55. Got him! This time we had a splendid fish, with 

 two tines holding him fast, the blood trickling freely from 

 both wounds. He is soon kicking out on the floor-boards 

 the life remaining in him. Who said he is in agony? The 

 fish surely is, if not entirely, all but cold-blooded, and does 

 not feel pain like a wounded snipe or a stricken hare. 

 Anglers would think fish have no right to feel at all : they 

 ardently hope they do not. And many actions and doings 

 of fish, which I have observed, have gone far to prove to me 

 that their sensitiveness to pain is not acute. A fish is firmer 

 and sweeter for being bled : most Dutchmen bleed and other- 

 wise kill their primer fish. Our own fishermen, I fear, do 

 not wait for a turbot or a plaice to die before gutting them ! 

 I have never heard or read a protest against these methods. 



6.58. My watch, like my waistcoat, is becoming begrimed 

 with mud. You can't help it ; and no Sunday suits should 

 be brought on to Breydon, where a splash of a wave will 

 stain your sleeve. I now had to rub the watch-glass on my 

 elbow to see its hands. Two more fishes impaled : one half- 

 grown, the other no larger than a Transvaal medal. Now 

 we stab three large ones at once. So fishes feel. Do they ? 

 And it is cruel work ! Isn't all butchery cruel ? The butcher 

 kills of necessity. Does he ? Vegetarians would say no ! to 

 that ! You will eat your beefsteak without remorse. / like 

 a pan of fish, and of my own catching, too ! 



7.5. Still jabbing. Fast again. This time I haul out a 

 rusty iron pan ! It is 



7.12 before I get clear of it ; and having straightened three 

 hooks that had bent, continue my jabbing. 



7.15. At the corner of George's "deek." Here the boat 

 grates on a bed of shells that is probably several feet thick ; 

 a boat's length away is a fearfully deep hole, scoured and 

 scooped out by eddying currents. We cannot reach bottom. 

 We find fish lying at the entrance of each of the little 

 tributary creeks that now empty their waters like so many 

 midget waterfalls. We get a lot of fish here ; and by 



7.30. We have had sufficient sport ; we must have caught 

 enough to fill two buckets. Our arms ache with the un- 

 wonted exercise ache " fit to come off." 



8 p.m. The sun is setting. All over the west it illumines 

 the blotches and streaks of fleecy clouds, which glow with 



