Sappers and Miners: The Flood beneath the Sea

by George Manville Fenn

Meanwhile the boys went on to continue their preparations, and then hurried home for their meal; then for the first time Gwyn thought of Grip, and whistled to him to come and be tied up, but the dog did not come.

“Smelt a rabbit somewhere,” said Gwyn, and thought no more about the dog.

In due time Dinass appeared down by the sandy cove, and after the long seine had been carefully laid in the stern of the boat, and the end lines left in charge of a couple of miners on one of the points, the boat was rowed straight out, with Gwyn paying out the net with its lead line and cork line running over a roller in the stern. Then at a certain distance the boat was steered so as to turn round to the right, and rowed in a curve, with the net still being paid out, till the rocks on the other side by the race were reached, and the sandy cove shut in by a wall of net, kept stretched by the leads at the bottom and the line of corks at the top.

At this point the boys landed with their trousers tucked up to the highest extent, jackets off, and arms bare as their legs, to start inland dragging the lines, the men on the other point starting at the same time, and bringing the dot-like row of corks to a rounder curve as the strain on the ropes grew heavier.

Tom Dinass now started for the point at the head of the cove to run the boat well ashore, and then go to the help of the boys as they toiled steadily on, stepping cautiously over the rocks, which were slippery with reddish-yellow fucus, till the broken part gave place to the heavy, well-rounded boulders which rattled and rumbled over one another in times of storms. Then the boulders gave place to shingle, which was rather better for the fishers, and lastly to the fine level sand over which the seine was to be dragged.

But this took some time and no little labour, for it was slow, hard work, full of the excitement of speculation; for the net, after enclosing so wide an area, might come in full of fish, or with nothing but long heavy strands of floating weed torn by the waves from the rocks perhaps miles away.

Experience and hints given by the blue-shirted bronzed fishers of the cove had taught the boys when was the best time for shooting the seine, however, so they generally were pretty successful; and as the net was drawn inland the bobbing of the line of corks and sundry flashes told that fish of some kind had been enclosed, when the excitement began.

It was a bright scene that summer’s evening, when the sea was empurpled by the reflections of the gorgeous western sky, the smoke from the smelting-house looking like a golden feather.

But neither Gwyn nor Joe had eyes for the beauties of Nature which surrounded the nook where their fathers had made their home, for the excitement of the seine drawing was gaining in intensity.

Dinass, after running up the boat by the help of a couple of the men who had strolled down to see, was hurrying to pass the boys and wade out with an oar over his shoulder behind the line of corks, ready to splash and beat the water should there, by any chance, be a shoal of mullet within—no unlikely event, for these fish swam up with the tide to feed upon the scraps and odds and ends which came from the village down the little streamlet. And often enough their habit was, when enclosed, to play follow-my-leader, and leap the cork line and get out again to sea.