Mark Penelly’s eyes seemed starting out of his head as, with a convulsive gasp, he seized hold of the net, along with the master and another, and they began to haul in fathom after fathom, which came up slowly, and as if a great deal of it were sunk.
“Why, there’s half the net overboard!” cried the master angrily. “How did you manage it? What have you been about?”
“There can’t be much over,” said the man who was helping; “she was all right just now. There’s a fish in it, and a big one.”
“Don’t talk such foolery, Zekle Wynn,” said the master. “I tell ’ee half the net’s overboard.”
“How can she be overboard when she’s nigh all in the boat?” said the man savagely.
“Zekle’s right,” cried Mark Penelly, who was hauling away excitedly; “there’s a big fish in it. Look! you can see the gleam of it down below.”
“Well, don’t pull a man’s nets in like that, Mas’r Mark!” said the other, now growing interested and hauling steadily in; “nets cost money to breed.” (Note. Cornish. Making nets is termed “breeding.”) “Why, it’s a porpoise, and a good big ’un too! Steady, lads; steady! She’s swum into the net that trailed overboard. Steady, or we shall lose her! Here, hold on, lads, and I’ll get down into the boat and—haul away!” he roared excitedly, as he had made out clearly what was entangled in the net. “Quick, lads! quick! It’s a man! It’s—my word if it ar’n’t young Harry Paul!”
The net was drawn in steadily over the roller at the lugger’s side, till Penelly and the master could lean down and grasp the arms of the drowning or drowned man, whom they dragged on board, and then, not without some difficulty, freed from the net that clung to his limbs. He had struggled so hard that he had wound it round and round him, and so tight was it in places that, without hesitation, the master pulled out his great jack-knife and cut the meshes in three or four places.
“You can get new nets,” he said hoarsely, “but you couldn’t get a new Harry Paul. There’s some spirit down in the cabin, Zekle. Quick, lad, and bring the blanket out of the locker, and my oilskin. Poor dear lad! he must have got tangled as he was swimming round. I’ll break that Zekle’s head with a boat-hook for this job; see if I don’t.”
The threatened man, however, came just then with the blanket and spirits, when everything else was forgotten in the effort to restore the apparently drowned man. Mark Penelly worked with all his might, and after wrapping Paul in the blanket and covering him with coats and oilskins, some of the spirit was trickled between his clenched teeth, and the men then rubbed his feet and hands.