BULLETIN OF THE UNITED STATES FISH COMMISSION. 35 ? 
posed that they must be swamped in coming alongside, they come on 
all the same, not even keeping a lookout, so far as one can observe, but 
running in every direction full tilt onto the ship, and as each boat 
touches, a man watches his chance, and just when the boat rises takes 
hold of the rail and swarms 
up over it and fairly tumbles 
on the deck, holding one end 
of the long painter in some 
way, either in his hands, under 
sometimes 
Fig. 22. Boarding Fish. 
u He picks himself up at once, rushes on to the shrouds or to a belay - 
ing-pin, takes a turn, and sings out, ‘All fast! 7 and then one of his 
mates in the boat, who has been paying out, hauls short on the painter 
until he gets abreast of the waist of the ship or some other part that 
may be vacant; the men in the boat immediately hand up the boxes 
one by one, their own man receives them over the rail and tosses them 
on deck, then puts his delivery note into a basket in the galley, and his 
work is done. It is the business of each smack to deliver her own cargo 
on the deck, and no help is given for the purpose, not even in the small 
matter of making fast a painter or helping in a trunk, and the short 
time occupied in the operation, as well as the apparent certainty and 
safety of the whole proceeding, are, to say the least, surprising. Indeed 
it seems little short of miraculous that in a sea with a rise and fall of 
quite 10 feet some eighty or ninety open boats should be launched over- 
board, manned and loaded, towed and rowed a considerable distance, 
brought alongside a vessel, unloaded, brought back, and hoisted on 
board again without a single accident, yet I saw this done without any- 
thing approaching to a misadventure, and from the general bearing of 
all concerned I could observe that there was no anxiety whatever on 
the subject. 77 
