286 Cod 



sea, where the weather is far more temperate than 

 off Newfoundland, although the gales and waves are, 

 if anything, more severe, there are fish enough to 

 feed the whole of the European population once or 

 twice every week of the year. 



And they are absolutely unmolested by man. 

 We really cannot take into account the infrequent 

 sailing ships briefly becalmed on the bank, whose 

 crew hurriedly snatch a sample of this ocean wealth 

 as they drift homeward. I vividly remember the 

 last time but one that I rounded Cape Agulhas, when 

 I was second mate of a large Liverpool ship, the 

 ' Britannia.' We were crossing the bank when, during 

 my watch, from midnight till 4 a.m., it fell a stark 

 calm. In anticipation of its doing so I had bent three 

 hooks on to the deep-sea lead line, to which I had 

 attached the hand lead of seven pounds. I baited the 

 hooks with fat pork, and as soon as the vessel's way 

 ceased I dropped the line. I got bottom at sixty-five 

 fathoms, and only five minutes after felt a splendid 

 tugging at the line. The night being very cold I 

 had a heavy coat on, but before I got my fish on board, 

 I was streaming with sweat. For I had two fish, 

 one weighing twenty-four pounds and the other twenty, 

 while the seven pounds of the lead brought the load 

 to nearly half a hundredweight to be hauled up through 

 nearly four hundred feet of water. 



I dropped my prizes with a crash on deck just over 

 the captain's head, and he, a most enthusiastic fisher- 

 man, was up with a couple of lines in two minutes. 

 The deep-sea lead-line was discarded and proper 

 tackle used, with the result that in an hour we had 

 forty splendid fish, none under fifteen pounds in weight. 

 And the most singular part of the business was that 

 those fish most obligingly followed our lines up, or 



