CHAPTER X.
TRAWLS AND WHALES.
A trawler, such as the Vixen was, is fitted out very differently from a seiner or a hand-liner, the styles of craft on which Breeze had made his previous fishing trips. Instead of a large seine-boat, she carries from four to eight dories, and a crew sufficiently large to allow two men to each dory, besides the skipper and cook. The trawls are tarred cotton ropes the size of a lead-pencil, that come in lengths of about fifty fathoms, or three hundred feet each. To these are attached at distances of a fathom apart for cod, and a fathom and a half apart for halibut, short lines of from three to six feet long, to the ends of which hooks are made fast. About six of these lengths of trawl, or 1800 feet, are coiled in a tub, and each dory will carry out and set from four to six tubs of trawl in from twenty to two hundred fathoms of water. The lines contained in the several tubs are made fast to each other, and all are set in one straight line, from one to two miles in length. The trawls are anchored at each end, and buoyed by small kegs, so that the hooks shall hang just clear of the bottom.
As the Vixen was on a “salt trip,” the pens in the hold, instead of being filled with ice, contained several hundred bushels of coarse rock-salt. She had a crew of fourteen men all told, and on her deck, fitting into each other like nests of buckets, were six dories, three on each side.
The next morning after reaching the Bank a fishing-ground was chosen, and the anchor was dropped overboard. Then the canvas was furled, the riding-sail was bent on, top-masts were sent down, and everything was made as snug as possible, and put in readiness for all sorts of weather. Baskets of frozen herring were got up from the hold, and cut into bait sizes with sharp knives on the bait-boards. These are heavy planks laid on top of the cabin. With this cut-up herring each dory crew baited the thousand or more hooks of their own trawl, and coiled the lines snugly away again in the tubs.
That afternoon the trawls were set, one astern of the schooner, one ahead, one off each quarter, and one off each bow, these positions having been drawn for by lot beforehand. Thus the schooner formed the centre of a circle of trawls, the outer ends of which were nearly two miles from her. The position falling to Breeze and Wolfe was that directly ahead of the vessel. After going far enough away to be sure of being well clear of her, in case she should have swung round by morning, they began to set their trawl. Breeze continued to row in a straight line away from the schooner, while Wolfe, after dropping overboard the light anchor and the buoy-line attached to its floating keg, began to pay out the trawl with its baited hooks. It required great care and considerable skill to get them overboard without snarls or knots, so that each hook would be certain to hang straight down by itself and clear of all the others. After the job had been done neatly and properly, the second anchor was dropped, and a buoy, with a flag on it to mark the outer end of the trawl, was flung overboard. Then their work was finished for the present; for the line was to be left “set” all night, and would not be visited until early in the morning.
As they rowed back to the schooner Breeze said, “Wolfe, I want always to carry out some fresh water and some hard-tack in the dory after this. I’ve heard my father say a great many times that if all fishermen would only do this, half the lives that are now lost on the Banks might be saved.”
“You’ll be well laughed at on board for a coward if you do,” replied Wolfe.
“I don’t care. I’d rather any time be laughed at than to be lost out there somewhere in a fog, and perhaps drift round for days without anything to eat or drink.”
“All right,” said Wolfe; “I guess I can stand it if you can.”
That night Breeze hunted up a small keg, which he filled with fresh water, and a box into which he put a couple of dozen ship biscuit wrapped in paper and stuffed into a sort of a water-proof bag that he made out of an old oil-skin jacket.