Mark Penelly’s face grew a shade more sallow, but he said nothing, only knelt down by a pile of loose net, and watched the young man, whom he looked upon as his rival, till Harry, swimming gracefully and well, came right up and answered the hail of the fishermen with a cheery shout.
“Come aboard, Mas’r Harry; we’re going to have the sweeps out soon, and we’ll take you in.”
“No, thank you,” was the reply. “I am going round you, and then back.”
Mark Penelly had gone over to the other side of the lugger while the conversation was going on, and he did not face the man he looked upon as his rival; while Harry, unnoticed by the busy fishers as he swam round, went on, touching the sides of the lugger as he lightly swam, but only the next moment to find himself entangled in a quantity of the thin mackerel net, which seemed somehow to descend upon him like a cloud, and before he could realise the fact he was under water, hopelessly fettered by the net, and feeling that if he could not extricate himself directly he should be a dead man.
Chapter Two.
Zekle makes Hay.
At first sight nothing seems more frail than a herring or mackerel net, one of those slight pieces of mesh-work that, in a continuation of lengths perhaps half-a-mile long, is let down into the sea to float with the tide, ready for the shoals of fish that dart against it as it forms a filmy wall across their way. The wonder always is that it does not break with even a few pounds of fish therein, but it rarely does, for co-operation is power, and it is in the multiplicity of crossing threads that the strength consists.
Harry Paul, as he struggled in the water, was like a fly in the web of a spider, for every effort seemed only to increase the tangle. He could not break that which yielded on every side, but with fresh lengths coming over the lugger’s side to tangle him the more. Even if he had had an open sharp knife in his hand he could hardly have cut himself free, and in the horror of those brief moments he found that his struggles were sending him deeper and deeper, and that unconsciously he had wound himself still farther in the net, till his arms and legs were pinioned in the cold, slimy bonds, which clung to and wrapped round him more and more.