THE MENHADEN FISHERY. 339 



davit tackle, the laughing excitement of the crews, and the rattle of rowlocks, I tumble head- 

 foremost into a boat, and the steamer was left behind. Now the flirting of tiny tails was plainly 

 visible, but I must confess that I did not learn to distinguish the reddish hue which indicates a 

 school of these fish until much later in the day. The two large boats side by side were sculled 

 rapidly toward the shore where the fish were seen, the forward part of each boat piled full of the 

 brown seine, which extended iu a great festoon from one to the other. There were four men in 

 each boat, all standing up, and in our red shirts and shiny yellow oil-skin overalls we must have 

 made a pretty picture on that sunny morning. Close by was a pound-net, where a porpoise was 

 rolling gaily, notwithstanding his captivity; but by maneuvering we got the 'bunch' turned 

 away from it and well inshore, where the water was not too deep. At last we were close to them, 

 and now came a scene of excitement. 



"'Heave it!' yelled the captain, and in each boat a sailor whose place it was worked like a 

 steam-engine throwing the net overboard , while the crews pulled with all their muscles in opposite 

 directions around a circle perhaps 100 yards in diameter, and defined by the line of cork buoys 

 left behind, which should inclose the fish. In three minutes the boats were together again ; the 

 net was all paid out ; an enormous weight of lead had been thrown overboard, drawing after it a 

 line rove through the rings along the bottom of the seine. The effect, of course, was instantly to 

 pucker the bottom of the net into a purse, and thus, before the poor bunkers had fairly appre- 

 hended their danger, they were caught in a bag whose invisible folds held a cubic acre or two of 

 water. 



"This was sport. I had not bargained for the hard work to come, to the unsportive character 

 of which my blistered palms soon testified. 



" None of the fish were to be seen. Every fin of them had sunk to the bottom. Whether we 

 had caught 10 or 10,000 remained to be proved. Now, lifting the net is no easy job. The weight 

 of nearly 10,000 square yards of seine is alone immense, but when it is wet with cold sea-water, 

 and held back by the pushing of thousands of energetic little noses, to pull it into a rocking boat 

 implies hard work. However, little by little it came over the gunwales, the first thing being to 

 bring up the great sinker and ascertain that the closing of the purse at the bottom had been prop- 

 erh executed. Yard by yard the cork-line was contracted, and one after another the frightened 

 captives began to appear, some folded into a wrinkle or caught by the gills in a torn mesh (and 

 such were thrown back), until at last the bag was reduced to only a few feet in diameter, and the 

 menhaden were seen, a sheeny, gray, struggling mass, which bellied out the net under the cork- 

 lines and under the boats, iu vain anxiety to pass the curious barrier which on every side hemmed 

 them in, and in leaping efforts to escape the crowding of their thronging fellows. How they 

 gleamed, like fish of jewels and gold. The sunshine, finding its way down through the clear 

 green water, seemed not to reflect from their iridescent scales, but to penetrate them all, and 

 illumine their bodies from within with a wonderful changing flame. Gleaming, shifting, lambent 

 waves of color flashed and paled before my entranced eyes; gray as the fishes turned their backs, 

 sweeping brightly back with a thousand brilliant tints as they showed their sides; soft, undefined, 

 and mutable, down there under the green glass of the sea; while, to show them the better, myriads 

 of minute medusae hurried hither and thither, glittering like phosphorescent lanterns iu gossamer 

 frames and transparent globes. 



"All possible slack having now been taken in, the steamer approaches, and towing us away to 

 deeper water, for we are drifting toward a lee shore, comes to a stand still, and the work of loading 

 begins. The cork-line is lifted up and made last to the steamer's bulwarks, to which the boats 

 have already attached themselves at one cud, holding together at the other. This crowds all the 



