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When they arrive on the coast, "huers" sharp-sighted men are stationed on the cliffs to direct the boatmen when to go out and where to shoot their seine-nets. When these are shot, millions of pilchards are often enclosed in a single net.
The boats were got ready, the nets thoroughly repaired, and corks and leads and tow lines and warps fitted. Huers, as the men are called who watch for the fish, had taken their stations on every height on the look-out for their approach. Each huer kept near him the "white bush," which is the name given to a mass of furze covered with tow or white ribbons.
The huers are on watch from August till late October, and it is the method of taking by seine that renders their signalling of great importance. The exact position of the fish must be ascertained before the seine-nets are dropped to enclose them. The takes are sometimes enormous, but seasons greatly vary, as the fish are governed by laws of feeding whose operation we cannot easily trace.
He and his companions cast their eyes constantly at the huers on the summit of the cliffs above, anxiously expecting the signal that a school had been seen in the far distance. But whether it would approach the shore near enough to enable them to encircle it was uncertain.
The leaded bottom of the net must touch the ground or the fish will escape; thus seine-fishing is only practicable in shallow waters. With it is associated the occupation of the "huers," who are stationed on the look-out above the shore, and who signal the arrival of the schools, easily seen in the daylight.
Many of the pictures now displayed in exhibitions bespeak a close intimacy between the painters and the fishermen. But the pilchards are of still more importance to the little huddled town where the fishers live; and these usually begin to arrive about August, when the huers have already taken up their position on the high places around, in order to signal the first sighting of the shoals.
And just after Elizabeth's marriage came on the hardest and most distinctive part of the fisher's year. All along the rocky coast the "huers" were standing watching for the shoals of pilchard, and the men were in the boats beneath, waiting for their signal to shoot the seines.
As it approaches the Land's End it divides, one portion making its way northward along the west coast, while the other moves forward along the south coast towards the Start. The huers can distinguish the approach of a school by a change in the colour of the sea.
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