ACROSS THE CAPE. 
333 
them on to the beach. It was an exciting race. If they 
succeed in driving them ashore each boat takes one share, 
and then each man, but if they are compelled to strike 
them off shore each boat’s company take what they strike. 
I walked rapidly along the shore toward the north, while 
the fishermen were rowing still more swiftly to join their 
companions, and a little boy who walked by my side was 
congratulating himself that his father’s boat was beating 
another one. An old blind fisherman whom we jnet, 
inquired, “ Where are they, I can’t see. Have they got 
them ? ” In the mean while the fishes had turned and 
were escaping northward toward Provincetown, only 
occasionally the back of one being seen. So the nearest 
crews were compelled to strike them, and we saw several 
boats soon made fast, each to its fish, which, four or five 
rods ahead was drawing it like a race-horse straight 
toward the beach, leaping half out of water blowing blood 
and water from its hole, and leaving a streak of foam 
behind. But they went ashore too far north for us, 
though we could see the fishermen leap out and lance 
them on the sand. It was just like pictures of whaling 
which I have seen, and a fisherman told me that it was 
nearly as dangerous. In his first trial he had been much 
excited, and in his haste had used a lance with its scab¬ 
bard on, but nevertheless had thrust it quite through his 
fish. 
I learned that a few days before this one hundred and 
sighty blackfish had been driven ashore in one school 
at Eastham, a little farther south, and that the keeper of 
Billingsgate Point light went out one morning about the 
same time and cut his initials on the backs of a large 
school which had run ashore in the night, and sold his 
right to them to Provincetown for one thousand dollars, 
