"Aye, that's the pilchard fleet."
"Sometimes they do, sometimes they don't; it's an uncertain fish the pilchard, and it's a rough life is fishing on this coast. There aint a good harbor not this side of the Lizard; and if they're caught in a gale from the southeast it goes hard with them. With a southwester they can run back here."
"Were you ever a fisherman yourself?"
"Aye, I began life at it; I went a-fishing as a boy well-nigh fifty year back, but I got a sickener of it, and tramped to Plymouth and shipped in a frigate there, and served all my time in queen's ships."
"Did you get sick of fishing because of the hardships of the life, or from any particular circumstance?"
"I got wrecked on the Scillys. There was fifty boats lost that night, and scarce a hand was saved. I shouldn't have been saved myself if it had not been for a dream of mother's."
"That's curious," I said. "Would you mind telling me about it?"
The old sailor did not speak for a minute or two; and then, after a sharp puff at his pipe, he told me the following story, of which I have but slightly altered the wording:
I lived with mother at Tregannock. It's a bit of a village now, as it was then. My father had been washed overboard and drowned two years before. I was his only son. The boat I sailed in was mother's, and four men and myself worked her in shares. I was twenty-one, or maybe twenty-two, years old then. It was one day early in October. We had had a bad season, and times were hard. We'd agreed to start at eight o'clock in the morning. I was up at five, and went down to the boats to see as everything was ready. When I got back mother had made breakfast; and when we sat down I saw that the old woman had been crying, and looked altogether queer like.