Glimpses of Three Coasts

by Helen Hunt Jackson

There were three auctioneers: one, a handsome, fair-haired, blue-eyed young fellow, was plainly a favorite with the women. They flocked after him as he passed from one to another of the different lots of fish. They crowded in close circles around him, three and four deep; pushing, struggling, rising on tiptoes to look over each other's shoulders and get sight of the fish.

"What's offered for this lot o' fine herrings? One! One and sax! Thrippence ha'! Going, going, gone!" rang above all the clatter and chatter of the women's tongues. It was so swift that it seemed over before it was fairly begun; and the surging circles had moved along to a new spot and a new trade. The eyes of the women were fixed on the auctioneer's eyes; they beckoned; they shook forefingers at him; now and then a tall, stalwart one, reaching over less able-bodied comrades, took him by the shoulder, and compelled him to turn her way; one, most fearless of all, literally gripped him by the ear and pulled his head around, shrieking out her bid. When the pressure got unbearable, the young fellow would shake himself like a Newfoundland dog, and, laughing good-naturedly, whirl his arms wide round to clear a breathing space; the women would fall back a pace or two, but in a moment the rings would close up again, tighter than ever.

The efforts of those in the outer ring to break through or see over the inner ones were droll. Arms and hands and heads seemed fairly interlinked and interwoven. Sometimes a pair of hands would come into sight, pushing their way between two bodies, low down,—just the two hands, nothing more, breaking way for themselves, as if in a thicket of underbrush; presently the arms followed; and then, with a quick thrust of the arms to right and left, the space would be widened enough to let in the head, and when that was fairly through the victory was won. Straightening herself with a big leap, the woman bounded in front of the couple she had so skilfully separated, and a buzzing "bicker" of angry words would rise for a moment; but there was no time to waste in bad temper where bargains were to be made or lost in the twinkling of an eye.

An old sailor, who stood near me on the wall, twice saved me from going backwards into the sea, in my hasty efforts to better my standpoint. He also seemed to be there simply as a spectator, and I asked him how the women knew what they were buying; buying, as they did, by the pile or the box.

"Oh, they'll giss, verra near," he said; "they've an eye on the fish sense they're bawn. God knows it's verra little they mak," he added, "an' they'll carry's much's two men o' us can lift. They're extrawnery strang."

As a lot of catfish were thrown down at our feet, he looked at them with a shudder and exclaimed,—

"I'd no eat that."

"Why not?" said I. "Are they not good?"

"Ah, I'd no eat it," he replied, with a look of superstitious terror spreading over his face. "It doesna look richt."

A fresh trawler came in just as the auction had nearly ended. The excitement renewed itself fiercely. The crowd surged over to the opposite side of the pier, and a Babel of voices arose. The skipper was short and fat, and in his dripping oilskin suit looked like a cross between a catfish and a frog.