“Keep wi’ us, lad!” came a musical hail to Josh, “and we shall do it yet.”
“Ay, ay!” shouted back Josh; and like a sentry he kept going to and fro, with the boats closing up, yard by yard, but slowly, for they had the weight of the widely-spread net to check their progress.
They were forty yards from Uncle Abram’s boat on either side, and it seemed a long time before they were twenty, and all the while this was the most dangerous time, for the alarmed shoal was beginning to swim to and fro. Then all at once they disappeared from the surface again, and Dick thought they were gone.
But the fishermen pulled steadily still, and their companions in the stern of each boat kept the line tighter, and just as they were now getting closer the mackerel showed again, making the water flicker as if a violent storm of rain were falling.
“Back out, lad, and go to port,” said the captain of the seine-boat; and Josh rowed steadily along close to the line, pausing half-way between the seine-boat and the beginning of the corks, that is, of the net.
The men in the little boat just at the same time passed their rope on board to their friends, and then went off to the right, to pause half-way, as Josh had done to the left.
Meanwhile the men on the seine-boat began to haul steadily at the ropes at each end, drawing the great circle narrower.
“Why, how big is this net round?” said Dick in a whisper, as if he feared alarming the fish.
“Mile,” said Josh laconically, “ropes and all.”
“But they are drawing the ropes in fast now,” said Will, “and when they get the spreaders together it will be seven hundred yards.”