“Well, then, let us heave over,” sang out the Captain, in his quarter—deck voice, as he called it. “One—two—three—off she goes!”
So, with a dull plunge, the trawl was “shot,” the old sailor and Mr Strong quickly pitching over the side, after it, the bunchy folds of the net; when the guy-rope fastened to the bridle of the beam was secured to the bowsprit-bitts and then again to a thole-pin aft, so as to prevent its getting under the keel.
The boat was then allowed to fill her jib and drift out with the ebbing tide, keeping a straight course for the Nab, and steering herself by means of the dragging net astern; neither the services of Bob nor of Dick being required any further at the helm under the circumstances.
“You can light your pipe now, if you like,” said Captain Dresser to Mr Strong, when this was satisfactorily accomplished. “We shall have nothing to do for the next hour or two; for we must have the net down long enough to let something have a chance of getting into the pocket of it.”
“I suppose the smell of tobacco won’t frighten the fish?” observed the barrister, gladly taking advantage of the permission and striking a vesuvian, his pipe being already loaded and ready. “Fresh-water anglers are rather particular on the point.”
“Bless you, no!” replied the old sailor laughing, “our fish at sea know what’s good for them and like it!”
Miss Nell, who seemed anxious about something, presently hazarded a question when her father had lit his pipe and was smoking comfortably on the forecastle.
“Are we not going to have any breakfast?” said she, in a very grave way, as befitted a matter of such deep importance. “I feel very hungry.”
“Dear me, I was almost forgetting breakfast!” cried the Captain, throwing away the end of the cigar the barrister had offered him, which he was smoking rather against the grain, preferring his tobacco in the form of snuff. “Dick, did you bring the things all right as I told you?”
“Yes, sir,” replied Dick. “They be in the fo’c’s’le, sir.”