All the boats engaged form a close circle round the inner line of corks, which is now a little sea of silver where the imprisoned pilchards beat and flutter, producing a sound for which we have no satisfactory onomatopoetic word. In moonlight this little sea is silver; in torchlight it is of fire with varied colours flashing through the redder gleams; and in the dark it is a sea of phosphorescent light, each mesh of the net, each fish, each seaweed illuminated as if traced in flame. Every one is now busy. The men dip in baskets, or maunds, expressly made for this purpose, and ladle out the quivering fish by hundreds into the boats. In a few moments they are standing leg-deep in pilchards. Every one on the spot is pressed into the service, and even a boat manned by nothing more stalwart than one or two half-sick and half-frightened women receives its orders; and 'Hold on ladies! all hands hold on to the boat,' serves to keep one of the busiest of the tucking-boats in equilibrium. The men, for all their hearty work, are like a party of schoolboys at play. Their humour may be rough, but it is never meant to be rude; their goodwill is sincere, for they have a share, however small, in the success of the catch; and the more they tuck, the more they will have for their wives and families to live on through the winter. It is their harvest-time; and they are as jocund as harvesters proverbially are. There is no stint of volunteer labour either. Men who have been working hard all day on their own account go out at midnight to lend a hand to their mates at the seine. Even though the take is for a hard-fisted master who would count fins if he could, and who would refuse his men a head apiece if he thought his orders would be carried out, they are all honestly glad. They remember the time when a rich school was the wealth of the whole cove, and when a string of fresh pilchards would be given freely to any one coming to the cove at the time of bulking, or, as we should call it, storing. Still, whatever of economic value there may be in this exploitation of labour, it has its mournful side in the loss of individual value which it includes. And no one can help feeling this who listens to the talk of the elder fishermen, sorrowfully comparing the old days of personal independence and generous lordship with the present ones of wages and a wide-awake lesseeship, conscious of its legal rights and determined to act on them.