FISHERIES PROTECTION 197 



the grey combers struck them pitilessly on the starboard 

 bow, and the spindrift, torn from their crests by the 

 bitter wind, seemed to scorch their hands and faces. 

 Night came, but with it no alleviation, and the crash of 

 the seas and the twanging sound of the gale rushing 

 through the rigging seemed to belong to an order of 

 things which had lasted since the beginning of time. 

 They anchored in the Firth of Forth, and for twenty- 

 four hours with red-hot stoves and boiling cocoa they 

 thawed the marrow in their bones. . . . Tolsta was 

 reached, and inquiry begun, the local fisherman 

 interrogated. 



" * You say illegal trawling has taken place in the 

 bay ; can you give me the date and the name of the 

 vessel ? ' 



" * Mayhap it was ten days or forbye a fortnight that 

 she heard a trawler in the bay.' 



"'Did you*** her? 1 



" ' She did not.' 



" ' And you don't know her name ? ' 



" ' She does not.' 



" * And that is all the evidence of illegal trawling you 

 have got to give me after coming five hundred miles to 

 find out ? ' 



" ' She knows no more than she has said.' 



" ' And this,' remarked the Captain to his companion, 

 the coastguard officer, as he lighted his pipe, ' is what 

 I've got to write a dispatch about to the Admiralty ! ' " 



The torpedo-gunboat was back on the Broad 

 Fourteens, in black, bitter December, and a winter 

 snowstorm was raging. The sea water froze as it came 



