When all the fish have been tucked there is nothing for it but to row home again in the freshening morning air. The tide is rising now, and the moon is waning. The rocks look blacker, the grey moss-grown cliffs more solemn, more mysterious, the white surf breaking about them is higher and sharper than when you set out; and the boom of the sea thundering through cave and channel has a sound in it that makes you feel as if land and your own bed would be preferable to an open boat at the mercy of the Atlantic surges. The tide has so far risen that you can land nearer to the paved causeway than before; but even now you have to wait for the flow of the wave, then make a spring on to the black and slimy rocks, which would be creditable to trained gymnastic powers. So you go home, under the first streaks of dawn, wet through and scaly, and smelling abominably of fish dashed with a streak of tar for a richer kind of compound. The whole place however, will smell of fish to-morrow and for many to-morrows. When the tucking-boats are brought in, then the women take their turn, and pack the pilchards in the fish-cellars or salting-houses. Here they are said to be in 'bulk,' all laid on their sides with their noses pointing outwards; layers of salt alternating with layers of fish. Their great market is Italy, where they serve as favourite Lenten fare. The Italians believe them to be smoked, and hence call them _fumados_. This word the dear thick-headed British sailor has caught up, according to his wont, and translated into 'fair maids;' and 'fair maids'--pronounced firmads--is the popular name of salted pilchards all through Cornwall. The pilchard fishery begins as early as June or July; but then it is further out to sea, sometimes twenty miles out. According to the old saying, When the corn is in the shock The fish are at the rock; harvest-time, which means from August to the end of October, being the main season for pilchard-fishing in shoal-water close at home. There are some choice bits of picturesque life still left to us in faraway places where the ordinary tourist has not penetrated; but nothing is more picturesque than seine-fishing in one of the wilder Cornish coves, when the tucking goes on at midnight, either by moonlight or torchlight, or only by the phosphorescent illumination of the sea itself. No artist that we can remember at this moment has yet painted it; but it is a subject which would well repay careful study and loving handling. _THE DISCONTENTED WOMAN._