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Father begged the doctor to get him well as soon as he could, seeing that he wanted to be out in the wherry to gain his livelihood. "All in good time, my man," answered the doctor. "You'll be about again in a few days, never fear. By-the-bye, I saw our friend Mr Gray lately, Mrs Trawl, and he was inquiring for you.
"Why, you an' me could set thet trawl! They've only gone out jest far 'nough so's not to foul our cable. They don't need no bell reelly." "Clang! clang! clang!" Harvey kept it up, varied with occasional rub-a-dubs, for another half-hour. There was a bellow and a bump alongside.
The swordfish also feeds upon squid, which are at times abundant on our banks. To what extent this fish is amenable to the influences of temperature is an unsolved problem. We are met at the outset by the fact that they are frequently taken on trawl lines which are set at the depth of one hundred fathoms or more, on the offshore banks.
Both hand-lining and trawling methods of fishing are in use here, but the trawl is fast displacing the older gear. Depths are about 35 fathoms over a sandy bottom and 50 fathoms all about it. Species and their seasons of abundance are as on the Outer Sandy Cove Ground.
Our schooner was a trawler, equipped with six dories and a crew of fifteen, including the skipper, the cook, the boy and two men for each boat. Each trawl had a thousand hooks, a strong ground line six thousand feet long, with a smaller line two and a half feet in length, with hook attached, at every fathom. These hooks were baited and the trawl was set each night.
It was as the Captain said, there being nothing found in the pocket of the trawl, beyond the carcase he had just consigned to its native element, save some mud and a few oyster-shells.
The case seemed clear enough until the inconvenient discovery was made that swordfish are taken on bottom trawl lines. In other respects their habits agree closely with those of the mackerel tribe, all the members of which seem sensitive to slight changes in temperature, and which, as a rule, prefer temperature in the neighborhood of 50° or more.
For six years he was not allowed to have a bed, for that luxury was generally denied to boys. He secured a piece of old netting, and he used to sleep on that until it became rotten by reason of the salt water which drained from his clothes. On mad winter nights, when the sea came hurling along, and crashed thunderously on the decks, the smack tugged and lunged at her trawl.
The trawl which they had to put down was, as we have said, a huge and ponderous affair, and could only be moved by means of powerful blocks and tackle aided by the capstan. It consisted of a thick spar called the "beam", about forty-eight feet long, and nearly a foot thick, supported on a massive iron hoop, or runner, at each end.
The bottom is somewhat broken mud, sand, gravel, and pebbles, with a great number of small rocky ridges, upon which good fishing is generally to be had, although these spots are quite difficult to find and accommodate but little trawl gear. There is virtually no fishing upon much of the interior parts of the bank between these spots, where the bottom is mostly of mud.
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