192 WATERSIDE SKETCHES. 



Favoured by wind and tide the Seabird, in a few minutes, 

 has ploughed through the yellow flood past Gorleston pier- 

 head and is cleaving blue water, crushing, as it were, 

 millions of diamonds out of her sun-gilded track as she goes. 

 The church bells make fainter and fainter melody, the low 

 shore land becomes lower, the people and buildings on the 

 beach dwindle, dwarf, and fade. It is an old-fashioned iron 

 handle which the skipper at the helm grasps, and this sug- 

 gests inspection, which reveals that the Seabird herself, if 

 not old-fashioned, may without defamation of character 

 be described as a homely sort of craft. The Yarmouth 

 herring fleet may have more comely vessels, but not many 

 of heavier tonnage than the Seabird. She was once a smack, 

 but has been latterly converted into a "Dandy," that is to 

 say a yawl-rigged concern of some five-and-twenty tons. 

 As a rule the Yarmouth herring boats are lugger rigged, and 

 the largest are not more than five-and-thirty tons. 



It is a day of peace on land, but these east coast toilers 

 of the sea, I soon discover, are wroth with'a keen grievance. 

 What is uppermost in the mind will speedily be proclaimed 

 by the tongue, and the sight of a small half-decked fishing 

 boat, of not a third our size, inflames the more inflammable 

 of our men. The grievance is, broadly stated, the presence 

 of Scotch fishermen in Yarmouth and Lowestoft waters, and 

 very bitter are the feelings of the English on the point. This 

 is a Scotch boat making for land, and as she passes us with- 

 in half a cable's length, our young men discharge a broadside 

 of jeers and taunts at her handful of men. " Pretty fellows 

 these Scots to brag that they never profane the Sabbath by 

 handling rope on that day, and yet to be skulking about like 

 this," shouts one. " They can live upon barley-meal without 



