The "two other young fellows" was tempting, but I did not smile. "They couldn't get me in," he continued unconsciously, "and I got knocked about a bit. My shoulder was main bad. I'm crawling about again, but it's hard work doing nothing." I repeated the words to myself as I walked away, "hard work doing nothing"--especially when "doing nothing" means a bare cupboard and hungry children, eh? Gorleston is perhaps not altogether so cheerful as I thought. Unsneck the door to Care and you might as well take it off its hinges. Late the same night, I was talking to the watchman at the end of the pier. A Yarmouth fishing-smack sailed out into the gloom. "Rough night," the watchman cried to the skipper. "Ay, ay," replied a gruff voice from below; and a moment later the smack was gone. "Better here than on that boat to-night," I observed, as the black sail faded and merged in the black cloud. "Ay," the watchman answered; "but they'll see worse before they see home again. There's queer weather to be found on the Dogger Bank in an eight weeks' trawling. I mind me of three hundred and sixty drowned in one March gale, and upwards of two hundred lost two or three years ago one Christmas night. Then there's always the risk of collisions in the fog, men washed overboard in a gale, or crippled in the small boat when they put out, as they must whatever the weather, when the Billingsgate steamer comes round in the night for the fish." "H'm! And what pay sends willing men to face these risks?" "Penny an hour, from time they start till they get back. That's fourteen shilling a week." "And when they come home?" "Pay stops." "God! how can their women and children live?" "Nay, now you're asking something. But they're better off than them as waits ashore all winter, and can't get a job." "Fourteen shillings! Why do they stand it?" "Because they can't help theirsels. There's too many waiting to take t' place o' them as has a job." "Have they no trade union?" "They've trouble enough to keep theirsels in work; who'd keep them if they went on strike?" "Fourteen shillings a week! It's shameful." "Happen it is, and happen the shame is not so much the men's as yours." "Mine? How?" "I suppose you buy and eat fish?" "Yes, and pay the price I'm asked; if I paid twice as much, would the fishermen get the money?" "Nay, I don't know. We look to you clever folk in London to settle these things." They are not awe-struck by the superiority of the "clever folk from London," these outspoken men of the sea. From the taciturn solitary policeman, who looks on us with undisguised contempt, to the ancient mariners by the river-side, who gaze on us with the puzzled stare that a Viking might have cast on a French dancing-master, the natives give one the painful impression that they regard us as prodigies of ignorance and uselessness.