"There will be a grand haul of herrings to nicht!" said he; but his partner, John o' the Buddon-ness, made no reply, for his keen eyes were fixed to windward. He had an uncomfortable feeling in his breast—for old seamen have secret instincts about the weather, instincts of which a landsman knows nothing, and in which he cannot share: but the evil foreboded by this old man's heart was different, perhaps, from what he anticipated.
"Tak' a pull o' the sheet, John," said Jamie; "though the weather looks grey, we are as safe as our neighbours—be a man—trust in God and St. Mary!"
"I do trust in them," said the old man, touching his bonnet with reverence as he looked upward; "but neither God nor St. Mary have said men shall no be drooned. I can face saut water and the northern scud, Jamie, as my faithers did before me—and face them like a man as ye say, and neither blench nor quail."
"Keep her away another point or sae," said Jamie, "for the glare o' the kelpfires and the saut pans have scared the droves frae this part o' the shore,—and mairower, the waterburn has been here for a week and mair."
This is a luminous appearance of the sea, which, like lightning, has the effect of scaring the herrings from the coast.
It is usually about this season—the end of June or middle of July—that the great heer, or shoal of herrings from the north, appears at the extremity of the northern isles of Scotland.
Where they come from, no man knows; but a surface of many hundred square miles of water becomes literally alive, and teeming with this prodigious body of fish. All the ocean seems to ripple around them, while whales are tumbling and myriads of porpoises surging and plunging through them, and clouds of gulls and gannets accompany them, screaming and in full flight.
The Scottish fishermen aver that they can scent this mighty drove from afar off, by the strong oily smell with which the air becomes impregnated. This yearly invasion divides into two bodies, one of which seeks the Ebudoe and the Irish Channel; the other keeps along the eastern and western coast of Scotland till October, and then, from her countless creeks and harbours, she sends forth her clinker-built fleets to net the annual mine of wealth with which her waters teem.
By sunset Jamie Gair and his companion reached the herring ground, where the gulls were screaming and the porpoises dancing through the short foamy waves, but still the sky was cold and lowering, and the sea was inky black; yet though the breeze was freshening, they shot their net, with inward hopes and a half muttered prayer—for they are pious souls, those hardy Scottish fishers—that a night of success might reward a day of toil amid the drenching spray.
Their boat, the Mary—for so she was fondly named—they denuded of her sail, and hooked on to the net, allowing her thus to drift before wind and tide. They were the farthest off shore, for more than a hundred boats were all drifting in the same fashion, between them and the land.