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As the fleet had a week or more to remain out, he had been unwilling to make the signal, though it might have been better had he done so earlier; but even the most experienced are at times mistaken as to the weather at sea. Those who had been trawling all day hauled their trawls on board; and those which had been brought up, lifted their anchors, and all made sail together.
Sometimes during the night while we were fishing into the west, a hundred sail or more of vessels, we would pass through another big fleet coming the other way, and some of our long trawls and warps would tangle with theirs.
Wait till we run into the fleet; we shall be sure to catch them before the trawls go down for the night, and, unless I'm mistaken, some of us will be astonished. I never go into a new fleet without seeing what a little weir we have at present to check a Niagara of affliction." Mrs.
By the dim light of two lanterns, Jim, Throppy, Budge, and Filippo were busy baiting the trawls with herring and coiling them into the tubs in the standing-room. Percy had withdrawn from his companions and lay across the heel of the bowsprit on the decked-over bow.
How curiously everything adjusted itself to favor the bringing about of this horrible catastrophe! The bait did not arrive till the half-past twelve train, and they were obliged to work the whole night getting their trawls ready, thus leaving the way perfectly clear for Louis Wagner's awful work.
They were constantly risking their lives and they had not much regard for their own lives or the lives of others. With them life was cheap. Night and day they faced the dangers of the sea as they worked at the trawls, and when they were not sleeping or working there was no amusement for them.
"I sh'd think you might a' cleaned up your boat, Andrer, if you was going to take ladies out," said she graciously. And the fisherman rejoined, that perhaps she would have thought it looked better when it went out than it did then; he never had got a better fare o' fish unless the trawls had been set over night.
The admiral of the fleet, among North Sea fishermen, is a very important personage. There is an "admiral" to each fleet, though we write just now about the admiral of the "Short Blue." He is chosen for steadiness and capacity, and has to direct the whole fleet as to the course it shall steer, the letting down of its "gear" or trawls, etcetera, and his orders are obeyed by all.
The trawls were neatly coiled in tubs made by sawing flour barrels in two, and as fast as they were baited with pieces of herring they were carefully coiled into another tub, that they might run out quickly without snarling when being set. "The last trawl was finished just before supper, at five o'clock.
Things went wrong and he took out just two hundred and fifty-four live ones. Not much profit about that!" Arranging to call near noon the next Thursday, Captain Higgins had soon rounded Brimstone Point and was on his way to Head Harbor on Isle au Haut, his next stopping-place. In the middle of the afternoon, while the boys were baiting trawls on the Barracouta, another boat chugged into the cove.
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