86 DIED LIFE IN ENGLAND. 



of feather bedsmen, there are worse places on a frosty night 

 than the cosy cabin of a fishing smack. It is true accommo- 

 dation is limited, and the landsman will look round helplessly 

 for the conventional hat-stand, besides being likely enough 

 to suffer from low hatchways, and to feel generally "cabined, 

 cribbed, confined " for a time until he has got more used to 

 the limited space 'tween decks. But for those to whom 

 winter shooting is the best in the year, who love the tonic 

 sting of a north-easter as it comes blustering over the salt 

 flats, hurrying down a whole new fauna of bird life from 

 the breeding grounds of the far north, such hardships deserve 

 a gentler name when leavened by prospects of a few hours' 

 brilliant sport on the morrow. 



A frost of a bitter kind came on not a dozen winters 

 ago, our coasts being peopled for a week or two with wild 

 birds, of a score of species, in flocks the like of which had 

 rarely been seen before. The cold, while it lasted, was 

 Siberian. We had chartered a handy fishing vessel, used 

 once or twice before on such occasions, to await us as near 

 as she could come to an out-of-the-way station on a sea arm 

 that ran in from our north-western coast; and by nightfall 

 on the third day of the frost we were rid of most of the 

 conveniences of town life, and afloat 'tween decks on our 

 smack. A warm at the gallery stove, a pipe, and a 

 pannikin of the skipper's after- supper " tea," a yarn or two 

 more or less spiced with the improbable, always nourished 

 by sea air, and then a few hours of sleep under the yellow 

 glow of a swinging lantern, were the preliminaries for 

 next day's work. An old hand under these circumstances, 

 coiled in his sea-jacket, a good blue jersey rolled up for a 

 pillow under his head, and comfortably swathed in a stout 

 Witney blanket, will sleep the sleep of the just, in scorn of 

 down beds and the frost outside. If he has served an 

 apprenticeship to green waters he will know in his slumber 

 when the tide has turned as surely as though he had sat up 

 to watch, probably going on deck to have a look round. At 



