Herrings were up! Sixteen shillings a thousand they had been before Christmas; then eighteen, twenty-three, thirty-one.... "They'm fetching two poun' a thousand tu Plymouth, what there is, an' buyers there waiting from all over the kingdom. An' they'm still going up, 'cause there ain't none. Nine bob a hunderd tu St Ives, I've a-heard say. There's a Plymouth buyer here to-day. I've a-see'd our Seacombe buyers luke. They Plymouth men be the bwoys!" Herrings too have been in our bay as they have not come for years--'gert bodies of 'em'--while a succession of gales and blizzards has been sweeping the whole of the rest of the British coasts, and driving the steam-drifters into harbour. Hence the price of fish: quotations very high; business nil, or next door to it. Our bay however, by a fortunate freak of the weather, has been amply calm for our little undecked drifters, though squalls off land have made sailing tricky in the extreme. We have seen the snow on the distant hills but none has fallen here. We have had the ground-swell, rolling in from outside, but of broken seas, not one. The boats that came in early on Christmas night (they didn't like the look of the weather) brought hauls of ten thousand or so. They had given away netfuls of herring to craft from other places, because they had caught so many, and the wind was against them and the sky wild. Next night, much the same thing. It was rumoured that some Cornish craft were beating up to the bay. Next day, the Little Russian, a small, snug, ragged, much-bearded man, was to be seen painting the stern of his old boat--a craft more tattered and torn, if possible, than her owner. "What be doing, Harry?" No reply. Great industry with the paint-brush. "Be going to sea then?" "Iss intye! What did 'er think?" The Little Russian went on doggedly with his work, and when he rose from his knees, there appeared complete, on the stern of his boat, in lanky, crooked white letters: _Shooting Star of Seacombe_. "Be it true yu'm going to sea t'night, Harry?" "Iss." "What do 'ee 'spect to catch? Eh?" No answer again. The Little Russian was hauling a couple of nets aboard. "Who be going with 'ee?" "Ol' Joe Barker an' 'Gustus Theodore." "Good Lord! '_Tis_ a crew, that! Be 'ee going to catch dree dozen or ten thousand?" "We'm on'y taking two nets," replied the Little Russian quite seriously. He was very busy. [Sidenote: _AND SHOVES OFF_]