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The first haul of the mission vessel was a great success, prophetic of the great successes in store, thought her skipper, as the cod-end was finally swung inboard in an almost bursting condition.
These irons were meant to drag over the bottom of the sea and keep the beam from touching it. Attached to this beam was the bag-net a very powerful one, as may be supposed, with a small mesh. It was seventy feet long, and about sixteen feet of the outermost end was much stronger than the rest, and formed the bag, named the cod-end, in which the fish were ultimately collected.
But now all danger of loss was over, and they proceeded to liberate the fish. The cod-end had its lower part secured by a strong rope. All that had to be done, therefore, was to untie the rope and open the bottom of the net. It fell to Luke Trevor to do this. Billy was standing by in eager expectation. Ned Spivin stood behind him.
He was naturally of an excitable what we may call a jovial jumping disposition, and, although he had now been some months at sea, he had not yet succeeded in crushing down that burst of delight with which he viewed the cod-end of the great deep-sea net as it was hoisted over the side by the power of block and tackle.
Besides being stronger, the cod-end was covered by flounces of old netting, to prevent the rough bottom from chafing it too much. The cost of such a net alone is about 7 pounds. To the beam, attached at the two ends, was a very powerful rope called the bridle. It was twenty fathoms long. To this was fastened the warp a rope made of best manilla and hemp, always of great strength.
Soon the great balloon-shaped cod-end with its solid mass of fish rose slowly into the air, and some of the men laid hold to be ready to swing it inboard and deposit it on the deck, when, suddenly, the stout rope that bound the lower end of the bag gave way. The entire mass of fish dropped back into the sea, and sank to the bottom!
Fishermen in sea-boots and sou'westers, with oilskin over one arm and a string of herring in the other hand, were trooping from the harbour up to the Zigzag by the rock called the Creg Malin. It was at the end of the bay, where cliff and beach and sea together form a bag like the cod-end of the trawl net. "It's not the fishermen at all it's the farmers they're thinking of," said one.
It was indeed a huge mass of wreck entangled with sea-weed which had rendered the net so heavy on that occasion, but there was also a satisfactory mass of fish in the "cod-end," or bag, at the extremity of the net, for, when, by the aid of the winch, this cod-end was finally got inboard, and the cord fastening the bottom of it was untied, fish of all kinds gushed over the wet decks in a living cataract.
This was soon hoisted up by means of tackle, and made fast to the side, and then began the hauling in we might almost say clawing in of the net, hand over hand, until the cod-end was visible near the surface. It now became evident that a grand haul had indeed been made, and that it had been the mere weight of the fish that had delayed them so long.
One of the curious results of this flood was that Bob was always more prompt to the summons to haul up the trawl than he had ever been before, more energetic in clawing the net inboard, and more eager to see and examine the contents of the cod-end. The explanation is simple.
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