“Sure and I will,” returned he, imitating her accent and making her brother and herself laugh, Mrs Strong only smiling faintly, as she had a marked dislike to any allusion to the Irish brogue. “The trawl, ma’am, is a very simple contrivance when it is understood; and, by your leave, I’ll try and make it plain to you. It consists of an ordinary net, like a seine, which you’ve seen, of course?”
“Yes,” replied his questioner, “I have seen them dragging the seine, as it is called, down on the beach often.”
“Oh, auntie, Nell and I saw them, too, the day after that storm we had when we first came,” said Bob eagerly. “I know, because I asked the men what they were doing, and they told me.”
“There’s nothing like asking for information,” observed the Captain approvingly. “It’s lucky, though, those men told you at once, or you’d have worried their lives out!”
“Sure and you may well say that,” put in Mrs Gilmour. “You have to suffer frequently from some little people’s thirst for knowledge.”
“I don’t mind,” chuckled the Captain, beaming with good-humour. “But, to go on with my description of the trawl. You must imagine, as I have said, an ordinary seine net, which must be a small one, and that looped up at the corners, too, somewhat in the shape of a funnel, or rather in the form of a cone sliced in two. The mouth of this apparatus is kept open on its flat side by means of a pole some ten or twelve feet long, termed the ‘trawl-beam,’ which floats uppermost when the net is down; while the lower side is weighted with a thick heavy piece of hawser styled the ‘ground-rope,’ around which the meshes of the net are woven. A bridle or ‘martingale’ unites the two ends of the trawl-beam.”
“Yes, I see,” said Bob, who was all attention, and taking the greatest interest in the Captain’s explanation. “I see.”
“Well,” continued the old sailor, “to this bridle there is attached a double-sheaved block, through which runs a hundred-and-fifty fathom rope, capable of bearing a heavy strain. But, in hauling this in, great nicety must be observed, for, the slightest hitch or deflection will cause the beam to turn the wrong way; when, if the net ‘gets on her back,’ as the fisher-folk say, all your catch is simply turned out into ‘the vasty deep,’ and your toil results in a case of ‘Love’s labour lost!’”
“But, what do you do with the net and beam, when it’s all ready?” asked Bob. “You haven’t told us that, yet.”
“Why, drop it over the side as soon as you get out to the fishing-ground,” replied the Captain laconically; “and now, I hope, you understand all about it?”