CHAPTER V. 



THE HERRING-FISHERY. 



j|HE fishing-boats generally start on their ex- 

 pedition an hour or two before sunset, their 

 crews consisting of four men and a boy, be- 

 sides the skipper and owner. Sometimes 

 both owner and skipper are combined in one individual. 

 The stores on board do not occupy much space : a loaf of 

 bread or hard biscuit and a keg of water can be stowed 

 away in any corner. The sail, a great brown stretch of 

 coarse and weather-beaten canvas, marked with the 

 registered number of the boat, is soon hoisted, and away 

 the fishers go, quickly leaving the shore and its sparkling 

 lights behind them. There is genuine excitement, we 

 can assure the reader, in an expedition of this kind, and 

 whoever visits one of the herring-ports in the herring- 

 season should make interest with a skipper, in order to 

 gain an experience of a novel and exhilarating phase of 

 life. The evening draws in apace ; darker and darker 

 grows the western sky, as the last pale reflections of the 

 sunset are lost in the deep clear blue of night. All 

 around, the waves are dotted with shifting gleams, as the 

 h erring-boats, rocked by the ripple and sped by the 



