“I don’t mean little boots in fine weather, sir, I mean big boots in foul,” replied Josh, rowing steadily away. “This here’s the place where we wanted to come, and I’m going to take you to a hole like with rocks all round it, a hole as goes down seven or eight fathom, and the congers swarm in the holes all about here, as you’ll see.”
Arthur’s hand tightened on the boat, and his dread made him feel almost ill; but he struggled with the nervous feeling manfully, though he dared not trust himself to speak.
And all the while Josh rowed steadily on till he was skirting round the edge of the perpendicular mass of rock about whose base the waves foamed and fretted, as if weary with their efforts at trying to wash it down. The birds squealed and hissed, and now and then one uttered a doleful wail as it swept here and there, showing its pearly grey breast and the delicate white feathers beneath its wings.
“Do you ever shoot these birds, Will?” said Dick, lying back so as to stare up at the gulls as they floated so easily by.
“Shoot them! Oh, no! The fishermen here never harm them; they’re such good friends.”
“Why?” said Arthur.
“They show us where the fish are,” replied Will. “We can see them with the glass miles away, flapping about over a shoal of little ones, and darting down and feeding on them; and where they are feeding, big fish are sure to be feeding on the shoal as well.”
“Then I shouldn’t like to be a shoal of little fish,” cried Dick. “Why, as the clown said in the pantomime, ‘it would be dangerous to be safe.’ I wonder there are any small fish left.”
“There are so many of them,” said Will laughing; “thousands and millions of them; so many sometimes in a shoal that they could not be counted, and—”
“Stand by with the killick, m’lad,” cried Josh, as he paddled slowly now, with his eyes fixed first on one landmark, then on another.