340 HISTORY AND METHODS OF THE FISHERIES. 



bunkers together in a mass between the two boats and the steamer's side, where the water boils 

 with the churning of thousands of active fins. A 20-foot oar is plunged into the mass, but will 

 not suffice to sound its living depths. Then a great dipper of strong netting on an iron hoop is 

 let down by tackle from the yard-arm, dipped into the mass under the guidance of a man on deck 

 who holds the handle, the pony-engine puffs and shakes, and away aloft for an instant swings a 

 mass of bunkers, only to be upset and fall like so much sparkling water into the resounding hold. 



" 'How many does that dipper hold?' 



" 'About a thousand.' 



" ' Very well, I will count how many times it goes after a load.' 



" But I didn't. I forgot it in looking down the hatchway. The floor of the shallow hold was 

 paved with animated silver, and every new addition, falling in a lovely cataract from far overhead, 

 seemed to shatter a million rainbows as it struck the yielding mass below, and slid away on every 

 side to glitter in a new iridescence till another myriad of diamonds rained down. If you take it in 

 your hand, the mossbuuker is an ordinary looking fish, like a small shad, and you do not admire it; 

 but every gleaming fiery tint that ever burned in a sunset, or tinged a crystal, or painted the petals 

 of a flower, was cast in lovely confusion into that rough hold. There lay the raw material of 

 beauty, the gorgeous elements out of which dyes are resolved abstract bits of lustrous azure and 

 purple, crimson and gold, and those indefinable greenish and pearly tints that make the luminous 

 background of all celestial sun-painting. As the steamer rolled on the billows, and the sun struck 

 the wet and tremulous mass at this and that angle, or the whole was in the half-shadow of the 

 deck, now a cerulean tint, now a hot brazen glow, would spread over all for an instant, until the 

 wriggling mixture of olive backs and pearly bellies and nacreous sides, with scarlet blood-spots 

 where the cruel twine had wounded, was buried beneath a new stratum. 



" ' How many?' I asked, when all were in. 



" ' Hundred and ten thousand,' replied Captain Hawkins. ' Pretty fair, but I took three times 

 as many at one haul last week.' 



" ' What are they worth?' 



" ' Oh, something over $100. Hard a-starboard! go ahead slow.' 



"And the labor of the engines drowned the spat, spat, spat of the myriads of restless little tails 

 struggling to swim out of their strange prison, while I climbed to the masthead to talk with the 

 grizzly old lookout, who had been round Cape Horn thirteen times, yet did not think himself much 

 of a traveler. 



'< The cry of ' Color off the port bow ! ' brought us quickly down the ratlines and again into the 

 boats. 



" That day we caught 250,000 fish, and made a round trip of 100 miles, going away outside of 

 Montauk Point, where it was frightfully rough after a two days' easterly gale. Great mountains of 

 water, green as liquid malachite, rolled in hot haste to magnificent destruction on the beach, where 

 the snowy clouds of spray were floating dense and high, and the roar of the surf came grandly to 

 our ears wherever we went. Yet the difficulties were none too great for these hardy fishermen, 

 who balanced themselves in their cockle-shells, and rose and sank with the huge billows, without 

 losing their hold upon the seines or permitting a single wretched bunker to escape." 



CERTAIN REQUIREMENTS OP PURSE-SEINE FISHING. 



METHODS OF HANDLING THE NET. Much care and expedition are necessary in handling a 

 purse-seine full of fish. In the event of a very large draught, if the fish are left in the net too long 

 they are killed by the confinement and close pressure and sink. In such a case the only alterna- 



