"It's the surf breakin' on the rocks," responds Bruce; "I hae been listenen to it for hoors."
"Are we then so near shore?"
"About three miles aff," replies the mate.
Presently we heard the sound of human voices; a laugh; the stroke of oars in the row-locks, plainly distinguishable in the mysterious vapor. The captain hailed: "Hallo!" "Halloo!" echoes in answer. The strokes of the oars are louder and quicker; they are approaching us, but where? "Halloo!" comes again out of the mist. And again the captain shouts in reply. Then a white phantom boat, thin, vapory, unsubstantial, now seen, now lost again, appears on the skirts of our horizon.
"Where are we?" asks the captain.
"Off St. Esprit," answer the boatmen.
"What are you after?" asks the captain.
"Looking for our nets," is the reply; and once more boat and boatmen disappear in the luminous vapor. These are mackerel fishermen; their nets are adrift from their stone-anchors: the fish are used for bait in the cod-fisheries, as well as for salting down. If we could but come across the nets, what a rare treat we might have at dinner!
Lazily on we glide—nothing to do. Picton is reading a stunning book; the captain, his lady, the baby, and I making a small family circle around the wheel; the mate is on the look-out over the bows; all at once, he shouts out: "There they are! the nets!" Down goes Picton's book on the deck; Bruce catches up a rope and fastens it to a large iron hook; the sailors run to the side of the vessel; captain releases his forefinger from baby's hand, and catches the wheel; all is excitement in a moment. "Starboard!" shouts the mate, as the nets come sweeping on, directly in front of the cut-water. The schooner obeys the wheel, sheers off, and now, as the floats come along sidewise, Bruce has dropped his hook in the mesh—it takes hold! and the heavy mass is partially raised up in the water. "Thousands of them," says Picton; sure enough, the whole net is alive with mackerel, splashing, quivering, glistening. "Catch hold here, I canna hold them; O the beauties!" says the mate. Some grasp at the rope, others look around for another hook. "Hauld 'em! hauld 'em!" shouts Bruce; but the weighty piscatorial mass is too much for us, it will drag us desperately along the deck to the stern of the vessel. The schooner is going slowly, but still she is going. Another hook is rigged and thrown at the struggling mesh; but it breaks loose, the mackerel are dragging behind the rudder; we are at our rope's end. At last, rope, hook, and nets are abandoned, and again we have nothing to do.
High noon, and a red spot visible overhead; the captain brings out his sextant to take an observation. This proceeding we viewed with no little interest, and, for the humor of the thing, I borrowed the sextant of the captain and took a satirical view of a great luminary in obscurity. As I had the instrument upside down, the sailors were in convulsions of laughter; but why should we not make everybody happy when we have it in our power?