“’Uman creatures’ lives,” Jack Chorley was heard to quote.
The auctioneer frowned him down, blew his nose and started.
“Beautiful fish, gentlemen,” thus suavely he addressed the buyers. “Now what offers, gentlemen, for the beautiful ’eaps of skate?”
Eight—nine—ten—; up went the bidding, until the pile of skate brought fifteen shillings a dozen, and the ray fetched the same high figure, too. Congers stuck at twelve shillings a hundredweight, but the hake reached as much as one-and-ten apiece; the turbot rose to twelve shillings the fish, and one halibut alone brought forty-two shillings.
On droned the voice of the auctioneer. “’Ow much for this lot, gentlemen? a shame to let it go for ten shillin’, sirs. ’Tis too good a ’eap to be give for nothin’. Come, gentlemen, come! What offers I say?”
“’Twarn’t on no rock as that boulter parted,” said Jim Hex, and shifted his wad of baccy from the right cheek to the left.
“No more it warn’t, Jim,” agreed Joe Cox. “Too good a catch for a rock.”
“A wreck for sartin’,” and Jim spat over the side of the quay.
“A bit o’ what ’peared to be a woman’s gound were catched up along wi’ the boulter,” corroborated Tregennis, somewhat huskily, from the shattered bow of the boat.