At last, Flucker, to whom she came in turn, told her he was going into two fathom water, where he would let out the bladders and drop the nets on their cursed backs. A strong remonstrance was made by Christie, but the baddish boy insisted that he had an equal right in all her nets, and, setting his sail, he ran into shoal water. Christie began to be sorrowful; instead of making money, she was going to throw it away, and the ne'er-do-weel Flucker would tear six nets from the ropes. Flucker hauled down his sail, and unstepped his mast in two fathom water; but he was not such a fool as to risk his six nets; he devoted one to his experiment, and did it well; he let out his bladder line a fathom, so that one half his net would literally be higgledy-piggledy with the rocks, unless the fish were there _en masse._ No long time was required. In five minutes he began to haul in the net; first, the boys hauled in the rope, and then the net began to approach the surface. Flucker looked anxiously down, the other lads incredulously; suddenly they all gave a yell of triumph--an appearance of silver and lightning mixed had glanced up from the bottom; in came the first two yards of the net--there were three herrings in it. These three proved Flucker's point as well as three million. They hauled in the net. Before they had a quarter of it in, the net came up to the surface, and the sea was alive with molten silver. The upper half of the net was empty, but the lower half was one solid mass of fish. The boys could not find a mesh, they had nothing to handle but fish. At this moment the easternmost boat showed a blue light. “The fish are rising,” said Flucker, “we'll na risk nae mair nets.” Soon after this a sort of song was heard from the boat that had showed a light. Flucker, who had got his net in, ran down to her, and found, as he suspected, that the boys had not power to draw the weight of fish over the gunwale. They were singing, as sailors do, that they might all pull together; he gave them two of his crew, and ran down to his own skipper. The said skipper gave him four men. Another blue light! Christie and her crew came a little nearer the boats, and shot twelve nets. The yachtsmen entered the sport with zeal, so did his lordship. The boats were all full in a few minutes, and nets still out. Then Flucker began to fear some of these nets would sink with the weight of fish; for the herring die after a while in a net, and a dead herring sinks. What was to be done? They got two boats alongside the cutter, and unloaded them into her as well as they could; but before they could half do this the other boats hailed them. They came to one of them; the boys were struggling with a thing which no stranger would have dreamed was a net.