II—THE FISHER-BOY.
enny, so here we are then," said the sturdy-looking sailor, as Ben, the "Reading-Boy," went running up to the railway station at Liverpool Street, London, just as the last shower of night rain was blowing away over the houses, and the sun was just peeping out and giving the grey sky a tint of salmon colour. "I'm glad as you've got from this mornin' to Wednesday, Benny, becos you see it's a pretty long v'yge from here to Yarmouth, and I'm glad you're in good time, Ben; an' I'm glad as your precious mother has made you put a coat over your jacket. 5.15 the train goes, Ben."
"What fun it is, eh, uncle! Only fancy my going down to the sea! Why, I shouldn't want to come back if it wasn't for mother."
"Now don't you be a rollin' stone, Benny. It's all very fine for fair weather sailors, to go and sit about on the beach, and p'raps be rowed out a little way, or take a trip when everything's smooth below and aloft, but just you find yerself aboard one of our smacks, in the North Sea, one night when there's a stiff sea on, and the wind cuttin' your hair off your head, and your hands stiff and blue with haulin' on to the trawl-nets, and you'd tell a different story. No, no, I don't think as you're cut out for a fisher-boy, or leastways a smack-boy, for that's what they call 'em."
"A smack-boy! that's a queer name," said Ben, laughing.
"Ah, ain't it? and there's a double meanin' in it too, for I can tell you the smack-men ain't very slow for to give the youngsters a knock over the head, or a smack of the face, or a rope's-endin'. But as it's Yarmouth we're bound for, you will soon see what our fisheries are really like; and there, too, you'll find our men hard at it in tarpaulins or canvas frocks, and wet through and through perhaps, and not much time to get a drop of hot coffee nor a bit to eat. Think of that, Benny."
Ben looked serious when he heard this, and it was not till they had taken their seats in the railway-carriage, and were rattling along far beyond the houses and amidst the trees and fields of the country that he began to talk again.
"Don't the boys that go fishing like their business?" he asked.
"Well, you see," said his uncle, "they've got to like it, because when they're once in it they can't well turn to anything else. It's a rough, hard life, especially for the young 'uns, Benny. Not so hard as it used to be, though. I can remember when I was a younker we used to go fishing for cod off the Dogger Bank, which is a great ridge of hills at the bottom of the sea, not far from the coast of Holland. We'd be out for a good while, and not have much to eat except cod b'iled or cod fried in a pan; and if there was much sea on, and the wind blowin' a gale, it was a hard matter to cook it at all. Now the cutters bring us some of our meat and vegetables and soft bread; but still the boys have a hard time.
"If it's the herring-boys, they have to watch the floats—the big, round things that you'll see at the edge of the nets, Ben—to keep them near the top of the water; and whether it's drift-nets or trawling-nets, they must take their share of hauling in and of playing out, night or day. More than that, too: any sort of work is boy's work, whether it's to swab the decks or to take a turn at frying fish in the cooking-galley, or paying a boat with tar, or helping to take a boat-load of fish off to the cutter in bad weather, when the waves tosses so that the fish, being loose, may slide, so that one side of the boat may heel over, and before you know where you are you're capsized and struggling in the dark, cold sea, with a singing in your ears, and the faint cries of your mates just as bad off as you are."
"But, of course, it isn't always so bad," said Ben.
"Well, no; and there's times when we've no call to grumble. Such weather as this, when there's green sea and blue sky, and bright sun overhead and clear moonlight nights, with fresh and light breezes to take the sail. Nothing could seem more pleasant than the life of a fisherman if it was always like that; but then, this isn't exactly fishing weather, Ben, and however fine it may be the boys haven't any idle time of it.
"There's always ropes to splice, or sails or nets to mend, or something to clean or to scrape, or to pay down with tar; and if there's any good in going out at all the nets must be looked to and lowered and hauled in. Even on Sundays there's things to be attended to by the lads, and though I don't say as 'ow boys is made to do useless work, yet, when they're there on that day, they toil pretty hard for little 'uns.
"And now, Ben, if you don't object, I'm going to smoke a bit o' bacca, and then you can rest your tongue a bit, if you like."
But Ben had a hundred more questions to ask about the fishing-boats, or "smacks," as they are called, and how many of them there were, and how many fish they caught at a time; and his uncle, who settled comfortably down and lighted his pipe, told him a great deal about them.
And Ben was surprised to hear that there are many thousands of men and boys who go out to catch the millions and millions of all sorts of fish that are sent to the markets in the large towns of England by railway nearly every day. He had been to Billingsgate Market in Thames Street, and to the new fish-market in Smithfield, and had seen the great piles of cod-fish, and skates, and soles, and plaice, and the boxes and baskets of white fresh herrings, and the beautiful shining mackerel, but he did not know how great was the number of herrings, and pilchards, and cod-fish that were also salted and put in barrels to be sent from England to foreign countries. He knew what bloaters were, of course, and had heard that they were herrings just a little salted and smoked over burning wood, but how was he to know that at Yarmouth there was a great fleet of herring-boats, and that in the cold November weather they went far out to sea in the mist and rain, and were night after night hauling in the great nets full of glistening silver fish?
His uncle was the owner of two smacks, but he did not go herring-fishing. He was what is called a trawler, and he and his men and boys used a different sort of net. The herring-nets are called drift-nets, and catch the fish that swim in shoals, which means a large number together, near the surface of the sea; but the trawl-nets are shaped like a long purse or bag open at the mouth. These nets go to the bottom of the sea, and in them are caught cod, whiting, soles, and other fish that lie at the bottom, and swim deep down in the water.
When Ben's uncle was a smack-boy the trawlers, after they had caught as many fish as they could carry in a deep well in their boat, used to sail away as fast as they could to Billingsgate Market, or to some place where people would buy their fish and send it by railway to London; but now the old fisherman said they had much bigger vessels, and would stay out sometimes for four or five weeks tossing about in the North Sea, or, as it is sometimes called, the German Ocean, and dragging the great trawl-nets night and day.
"Not much time to play, Ben, my boy," said the bluff old fellow. "Sometimes not too much to eat either, except fish and biscuit, and not much room to sleep in when you turn in to your hard wooden bunk and pull a rough blanket over you to keep out the cold."
"But you don't keep the fish long on board, do you, uncle?" asked Ben.
"No, no, my lad. A fast-sailing boat that we call a cutter comes and goes from shore to the fleet of trawlers, and takes the fish off; backwards and forwards it goes, and away goes the fish directly it's sold—up to London, or elsewhere, where there's millions of mouths waiting for it. Ah! I well remember when the smack-boys, or the fisher-boys, would have to help to take the fish off in a boat to the cutter on a dark night, and many a time the poor fellows would get capsized, and afterwards go down in that cold North Sea. Hard work, my lad, hard fare; and in danger half the time. Things are better now, perhaps; but we're out longer a good deal, and there's a big fleet that belongs to a company that keeps the men and the boys out for weeks at a time, and fetches all that they catch, so that by the time they get ashore the poor fellows are pretty near worn out. Of course the cutter takes out food for 'em, but it can't take 'em out warmth and dry clothes, and snug beds, and every year there is some of the vessels lost, and perhaps all on board lost too."
"Well," says Ben, looking very solemn; "there's some that get lost on land too. They fall ill or get a bad cough, or have some sort of accident with machinery or something, you know, uncle; but we're obliged to work all the same."
"Well said, my boy Ben," said the fisherman. "The thing is to do our duty, whatever it may be, and to pray that we may be made able to do it. Some of our smack-boys go to school when they're at home, and there's a mission-room where they go to hear and to read the Bible, and have teas and singing, and various treats, and some fun too sometimes. Yes, things are better than they used to be in my young days."
It was a long journey to Yarmouth, but Ben greatly enjoyed it, and when he and his uncle got there they went at once to have a look at the sea.
Such a great broad expanse of soft yellowish sandy beach, where the great waves came rolling in! such a long pier where people were fishing with hooks and lines, and sometimes catching a codling or a whiting! "I'll go and have a try at that by-and by," said Ben; "but what are those great wooden towers that look like a sort of big puzzle stuck up on end?"
"They're the look-out towers, Ben. Now, do you see that cutter over yonder, coming into shore with its big sail like a sea-bird's wing? Keep your eye on it for a minute, and then look at the top of that tower, and you'll see that there are men there that have got their eyes and their telescopes on it too. Now do you see these carts coming along, and do you see those black barges floating ready to pull out when the cutter comes near in shore? The cutter will unload a rare lot of fish. The men on the look-out tower saw her coming, and signalled to the barges and the carts to be ready. That shipload of fish will be off by a special train to-night, Ben; and if you were in London you might, if you could afford it, have some of it."
"But where's the herrings—the Yarmouth bloaters, you know?" asked Ben.
"Ah, well! this isn't the time to see so much of them. It's in the winter you see the herring-smacks come in at the herring-wharf over yonder, and hundreds of baskets full of the shining fellows brought ashore and sold, and sent off fresh in no time; while others are kept here to turn into bloaters, or red herrings, or kippers. Those sheds in the yard over there are where hundreds of women and girls set to work to salt or pack the herrings in barrels; the bloaters are what we call cured in the herring-office."
"That's a funny name," said Ben.
"Yes; and it's funny what goes on there. The herrings are brought ashore, are shot out of the baskets on to the stone floor, shovelled into big tubs to be washed, and then threaded through the gills on to long laths of wood. Then these laths with the rows of herrings strung on 'em are hung in frames from wall to wall of a top room, like a barn with a stone floor, and a hole in the roof. When that room's full of herrings all hanging in rows—thousands and thousands o' fish—a fire of oak chips and logs is lighted on the floor, and the smoke going all among the herrings, and only by degrees getting out of the hole in the roof, the fish are smoked; and them that's salted first is red herrings, and them that's only just touched dry with the smoke like are bloaters.
"So now we'll get down to our lodging, and have some supper, Ben; and so to bed, that we may be up early in the morning; but don't you dream about being a smack-boy, or you won't sleep at all sound, I can tell you."
Thomas Archer
THEIR WONDERFUL RIDE.
"two little folk were riding."
s I passed down the pathway
I heard a merry pair
Shout from behind the garden wall,
"Let's ride the old brown mare."
With whip and voice I heard them
Urge on the maddened steed,
Whilst to my frantic warnings
They paid no single heed.
Then quickly down the garden, Trembling with fear and fright,
And bursting open wide the door
I saw this curious sight:—
Upon a wooden railing
That ran down from the wall,
Two little folk were riding,
Quite safe from fear or fall.
"Why, auntie, what's the matter?"
Shouted the merry pair;
"You cannot think what fun it is
To ride the old brown mare!"