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Updated: June 26, 2025
Their boats are of every size, but the shape is nearly the same in each case, from the tiny kôlek which can only hold three men, to the great pûkat dâlam or seine-boat, which requires more than a score of paddlers to work her. They are all made of chĕngal, one of the hardest and toughest woods that is yielded by the jungles of the Peninsula.
To the mast-heads of other vessels out in the night were other skippers, or seine-masters, and all with skill and nerve and a great will to get fish. The Johnnie was making perhaps ten knots good now, and with every jerk the painter of the seine-boat chafed and groaned in the taffrail chock. The skipper from the boat called for more line. "Slack away a bit, slack away. We're not porpoises."
Now and then an idle puff parted the bank to right and left, their sail flapped impatiently, and in the sudden space they saw the barge that dashed along with the great white seine-boat heaped high with nets towering in its midst, the oars of the six red-shirted rowers flashing in the sun as it cut the channel and rushed by to join the fishing-fleet outside, or they caught a glimpse of some little gunning-float, covered with wisps of hay and carrying its single occupant couched perdu along its length, or, while they lunched and trifled and jested, Eve with her crumbs tolled about them the dwellers in the depths, and in the falling flake of sunshine laughed to see a stately aldermanic flounder, that came paddling after a chicken-bone, put to rout by a satanic sculpin, whereat an eel swiftly snaked the prize away, and the frost-fish, collecting at a chance of civil war, mingled in the mêlée, tooth and nail, or rather fin and tail.
"How much net out now, sir?" he asked the statistician in a few minutes. "Quarter of a mile," was the reply. "Shall we close in then, eh?" "You'd better." The seine-master, feeling that the school of mackerel had been inclosed, turned the seine-boat towards the dory and, under the powerful arms of the fishermen, the circle was soon completed. It was a perfect set.
"Quartering yes, but with everything hauled inboard," said the skipper. "He'll try it, I guess. I was with him for two years, and if he feels like trying it he'll try it." "And s'pose he does try it, Skipper?" "Oh, he'll come pretty near making it, though he stands a good chance to scrape the paint off our seine-boat going by. No, don't touch the seine-boat let her be as she is.
In the seine-boat it was double-banked oars, nine long blades and a monstrous big one steering good as another oar that and all driving for dear life, with Long Steve and a cork-passer standing by the seine and the skipper on top of it, with his eyes fixed on the school ahead his only motions to open his mouth and to wave with his hands to the steersman behind him.
"You'll know in a minute," said Clancy, and he leaped for the seine-boat and made it, and grabbed the steering oar. "Stand by push off! Fend off in the vessel there! Steve, if anything happens you know you're to take the Johnnie home. Give way, fellows. Now! Watch out! now now then, around with her end on, and there she is like a bird! And now drive her!"
It was a good bit of work that, well and quickly done, and it was fine to get a rest after it, although it might be only for a little while. Even though we had to do it all over again to stay half-drowned and chilled through in the seine-boat or dory for half the night and then dress down for eighteen or twenty hours on top of it what did a little hard work matter?
Drenched oilskins steamed, wet faces glowed, glad eyes shone through the smoke flare, and the pitching vessel, left to herself, plunged up and down to the lift and fall of every sea. Her deck was pretty well filled with mackerel when "All dry," said Long Steve, and drew the last of the seine into the boat. "Then hurry aboard and drop that seine-boat astern. And whose watch?
The wind had been rising rapidly, and just as the seine-boat reached the dory a sharp rain squall struck. But the cry was, "Purse up!" for until a seine is partly pursed up, there is no telling whether the fish are really in or not. For a moment, however, it was almost impossible to purse up, the wind and rain were beating so savagely.
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