There was quite enough interesting business to see after breakfast to
make Mr Temple disposed to go out to the great seine, so that when,
about eleven, Will came to the inn to say that he was just going out to
the men, if Master Dick or Master Arthur would like to come, their
father readily accepted the invitation for all three. So they were
rowed out, to find the men very busy at work in boats beside the great
circle of corks, shooting a smaller seine inside the big one; and this
being at last completed, the small seine was drawn close, the lower rope
contracted, and the fish huddled together so closely that a small boat
was at work amongst them, the men literally dipping the struggling fish
out of the water with huge landing-nets and baskets, the water flying,
and the silvery, pearly fish sparkling in the sun.
It was a most animated scene, for as a boat was loaded she went ashore,
and the fish were rapidly counted, thrust into small stout hampers, tied
down, and loaded on to carts waiting for their freight, and then off and
away to the railway-station almost before the fish were dead.
Josh and Will stood high in the good graces of the seine men for their
help that morning, so that there was quite a welcome for the party in
the boat as the corked line was pressed down, and Josh took the boat
right into the charmed circle where the fish were darting to and fro in
wild efforts to escape through the frail yielding wall of net that held
them so securely.
"I've got a net ready for you," said Will, drawing a strong landing-net
from under a piece of sail and handing it to Dick, who was soon after
busily at work dashing it in and capturing the lovely arrowy fish in
ones and twos and threes. Once he caught five at once, and drew them
inboard for his father to admire the brilliancy of the colours upon the
live fish, and the lovely purple ripple marks that died away on the
sides in a sheen of pink and silver and gold.
Now and then other fish were netted, but fish that had been surrounded
with the mackerel. Several times over little stumpy red mullet were
seen--brilliant little fish, and then grey mullet--large-scaled silvery
fish with tiny mouths and something the aspect, on a large scale, of a
river dace.
The fishermen found time to good-naturedly call Josh when any particular
prize of this kind was found, and the Temples had not been there long
before, flapping, gasping, and staring, a very monster of ugliness was
taken out in a landing-net, along with a score of mackerel.
This flat-sided, great-eyed, big-headed creature, with a huge back fin,
and general ugliness painted in it everywhere, had a dark mark on either
side of the body; and though arrayed and burnished here and there with
metallic colours, the fish was so grotesque that its beauties were quite
ignored.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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