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Updated: May 8, 2025
He told him, "He might easily find a way to get off, if he had a mind to it: I am going down the bay," said he, "and shall return hither in about a month, and if I find you upon the island when I come back, I'll carry you to Jamaica, and there hang you." "How can I get away?" answered Vane. "Are there not fishermen's dories upon the beach? Can't you take one of them?" replied Holford.
Years upon years of apprenticeship are needed before a man can manage one of these crank boats; in fact, the fishermen's proverb says, "You must be born in a coble if you want to learn anything about her." The race of men who work in the cobles have good chances of becoming skilful, for they begin very early.
Great was the excitement as we dropped the lines overboard, as to who should catch the first whale. Jorrocks and myself having taken the fishermen's lines from them, we all met upon pretty equal terms, much like gentlemen jockeys in a race. A dead silence ensued. "I have one!" cried the youngest of our new friends. "Then pull him up," responded one of the boatmen, "gently, or you'll lose him."
Here there was a broad gap through the jagged reef which fringed the shore, and through this gap the fishermen's boats had shot in fair or foul weather for more generations than men could remember. Casely said to one of the women "He'll be all right if he comes in to the north of the Cobbler. If he doesn't, it's a bad job."
It was at a place where there was a wide beach, which was entirely covered with fishing boats, that had been drawn up there on the sand. Between the boats and the street there was a level place, where the fishermen's families had established themselves. Some were making or mending nets. Some were frying fish in the open air.
Near the door was a pair of amphoræ, drawn up by fishermen's nets whitish earthern jars with pointed bases, indurated by the sea and capriciously decorated by Nature with garlands of adhering shells. In the center of the table, between the periwinkles, was another gift from Tío Ventolera, a terra cotta female head with a strange round tiara crowning her braided hair.
So a wise and gray-bearded gnome was chosen by the high sounding title of klokken-spieler, or bell player, to test the bells for a carillon. They were all hung, for practice, on the big trestles, in a long row. Each one of these frames was called a "hang," for they were just like those on which fishermen's nets were laid to dry and be mended.
The view from the square tower a mere roost for unclean sea-fowl, from the sides of which rags of peeling moss and vine hung like tattered clothing was equally depressing. The few fishermen's huts along the shore were built of stones taken from the ruin, and roofed in with sodden beams and timbers in the last stages of deliquescence.
It was a time of wonderful discoveries for Howard, that month spent in the little house under the cliff and beside the cove. It was a tiny hamlet with half a dozen fishermen's cottages and two or three larger houses, holiday-dwellings for rich people; but there was no one living there, except a family of children with a governess.
It was a wild place, only a few deserted fishermen's huts on the rocky shore, where we lived on fish and clams until taken off by a passing ship. But that same rocky shore meant safety, shelter, life. And so in the after years I have always blessed Killykinick. And you are going there to-morrow!
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