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The terrific storms that lash the coast; the kelp and spars, and sometimes the bodies of drowned men, tossed on shore by the scornful waves; the shipyards, the wharves, and the tawny fleet of fishing-smacks yearly fitted out at Rivermouth these things, and a hundred other, feed the imagination and fill the brain of every healthy boy with dreams of adventure.
Here was a school of splashing swimmers; there, a fleet of fishing-smacks; a provision-ship loading for a cruise as consort to one of the great war vessels. They passed King Olaf's ship-sheds, where fine new boats were building, and one brilliantly-painted cruiser stood on the rollers all ready for the launching.
Again he began the repetition, saying it very loud and plain; he said it over and over till his mind wandered far out to sea, and while his tongue repeated "penna, pennæ," he was counting the white sails of the fishing-smacks, and thinking of pulling up codfish at the Banks. "There now, Mara, try me," he said, and handed her the book again; "I'm sure I must know it now."
It was of course possible to go back to fishing-smacks and fishing-tackle; but should they? And they hesitated.
The former effected nothing except sowing of some floating mines which subsequently sank British submarine and two fishing-smacks, while one of the participating cruisers, the Yorck, struck a German mine and sank on entering Wilhelmshaven. The December raid was more successful in its murderous intention of extending the schrecklichkeit practised in Belgium to civilians on British shores.
XVIII. Timoleon, however, relieved them by sending corn from Katana in small fishing-smacks and boats, which, chiefly in stormy weather, stole in through the triremes of the barbarians when they were scattered by the roughness of the sea.
The Evening Star was at that time the centre of a constellation if we may so call it of fishing-smacks, which floated in hundreds around her.
They have a fancy that they would like to see again the homes of their youth, the farmhouse in the hills, the cottage in the river valley, the lonesome house on the wide prairie, the street that ran down to the wharf where the fishing-smacks lay, to see again the friends whom they left there, and perhaps to take up the occupations that were laid down when they seized the musket in 1861.
"Was that your boat that went down?" shouted Groggy Fox of the Cormorant, as he sailed past the Fairy, after the carrying-steamer had left, and the numerous fishing-smacks were gradually falling into order for another attack on the finny hosts of the sea.
Fisher-folk of picturesque type were strolling about, most of them Bretons; several of the men with handsome, simple faces, not at all brutal, and with a splendid brownness the golden-brown colour on cheek and beard that you see on an old Venetian sail. It was a squally, showery day, with sudden drizzles of sunshine; rows of rich-toned fishing-smacks were drawn up along the quays.
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