The fish often, when so placed, make a squeaking noise; this is called “crying for more,” and is regarded as a most favourable sign. More fish may soon be expected to be brought to the same cellar.
The noise which is heard is really produced by the bursting of the air-bladders; and when many break together, which, when hundreds of thousands are piled in a mass, is not unusual, the sound is a loud one.
THE PRESSING-STONES.
Those who are not familiar with the process of “curing,” (salting) pilchards for the Italian markets, will require a little explanation to understand the accompanying story.
The pilchards being caught in vast quantities, often, amounting to many thousand hogsheads at a time, in an enclosing net called a “seine,” are taken out of it—the larger net—in a smaller net, called the “tuck net,” and from it loaded into boats and taken to the shore. They are quickly transferred to the fish-sellers, and “put in bulk”—that is, they are well rubbed with salt, and carefully packed up—all interstitial spaces being filled with salt—in a pile several feet in height and depth. They remain in this condition for about six weeks, when they are removed from “the bulk,” washed, and put into barrels in very regular order. The barrels being filled with pilchards, pressing-stones,—round masses of granite, weighing about a hundredweight,—with an iron hook fixed into them for the convenience of moving, are placed on the fish. By this they are much compressed, and a considerable quantity of oil is squeezed out of them. This process being completed, the cask is “headed,” marked, and is ready for exportation.
Jem Tregose and his old woman, with two sons and a daughter, lived over one of the fish-cellars in St Ives. For many years there had been a great scarcity of fish;[52] their cellar had been empty; Jem and his boys were fishermen, and it had long been hard times with them. It is true they went out “hook-and-line” fishing now and then, and got a little money. They had gone over to Ireland on the herring-fishing, but very little luck attended them.
Summer had passed away, and the early autumn was upon them. The seine-boats were out day after day, but no “signs of fish.” One evening, when the boys came home, Ann Jenny Tregose had an unusual smile upon her face, and her daughter Janniper, who had long suffered from the “megrims,” was in capital spirits.
“Well, mother,” says one of the sons, “and what ails thee a’?”