THE EARLY CUP O' TAY
Tony cannot fill his spare time by reading: it makes his long-sighted eyes smart. On account of that, and of nights at sea, with rest taken when and where possible, he has developed an amazing talent for 'putting it away'; that is, for sleeping. He can turn out perfectly well at any hour, if need be, but at ordinary times he is most content to follow somebody else's first. I on my part, sleeping indifferently well, wake usually before dawn, and greatly dislike waiting for an early cup o' tay.
About half-past four I jump out of bed, creep downstairs and chop wood. That warms me. Then with a barbaric glee, I scrape out the ashes, sending clouds of dust over the guernseys and boots that have been set near the fire to dry. No matter; being light and fire-dry, it will brush off the one and shake out of the other. People who never light fires at dawn can have no idea of the exhilaration to be obtained from a well-laid, crackling, flaming fire.
Tony appears at the door, half-dressed, yawning and stretching his arms on high. "Yu an't been an' made tay, have 'ee?" he says with delighted certainty. The cups are filled. He takes up Mam 'Idger's cup and returns with the paper roll of 'Family Biscuits.' We forage for tit-bits, feed standing, yawn again, and go out to 'see what to make o'it.'
Unless the sea is broken by the wind, there is about it just before dawn a peculiar creeping clamminess. It seems but half awake, like ourselves. It has no welcome for us. "Can't you wait," it seems to say, "till I begin to sparkle?"
Tony looks out over. "Had us better tu?" he asks with a shiver.
"Why not?"
"Shove her down then. There's macker out there!"
By the time the sun is rising (it never rises twice the same) south of the easternmost headland, Tony has worked himself into a tear over self-tangling lines, and has been laughed out of it again. We are perhaps a mile or two out, and if the mackerel are biting well, we are hauling them in, swiftly, silently, grimly; banging them off the hook; going Tsch! if they fall back into the sea; cutting baits from fish not dead. If, however, they are not on the feed, we sing blatant or romantic or sentimental songs (it is all one out there), and laugh with a hearty sea-loudness. And if the mackerel will not bite at all we invent a score of reasons and blame a dozen people and things. But there we are—ourselves, the sea, and the heavenly dawn—the sea heaving up to us, and ourselves ever heaving higher, up and over the lop. It exalts us with it. We hardly need to talk. A straight look in the face, a smile.... We are in the more immediate presence of one another. Did we lie to each other with our tongues, the greater part of our communications would yet be truth.
THE PRICE OF FISH