“We was out fishin’ one quiet night,” he said, “and had just got our trawl awash, and was a-goin’ to hand it in-board, when Bill, here, all of a sudden lets go his holt, roars out like a stuck pig—“Oh-h-h!—What the —— is that?” and tumbles back’ards into an empty fish-basket. We hadn’t no time to ’tend to him till we’d got our haul on deck, but I guessed what was up; and when we looked round we pretty near split our sides with laughing. There was Bill a-leanin’ back agin the skiff, wipin’ his eyes, to get some muck out of ’em, as he said made ’em smart, and his face for all the world as if Davy Jones had emptied a tar-barrel on his head, and he looking as doleful as a schoolboy as has upset the inkstand over his hands and smeared his face with it in rubbin’ the tears away while he was a-crying for fear the master’d lick him. Well, sir, it were one o’ them scuttles as we’re talkin’ about as we’d brought up, and they _can_ shoot straight and no mistake. It’s my opinion as Mr. Scuttle sighted Bill’s nose as soon as he come atop of the water and aimed right at it; for you can see, sir, as Bill’s nose looms as red as Beachy Head Light in a fog, and any scuttle as misses it must be a fool. Bill won’t forget that dose of ink for a good while yet—will ’ee, old man?” Bill is very good natured, and joined heartily in the laugh elicited by the anecdote. The worthy fellow might have retorted that he had seen his friend’s face, and those of half the population of his neighbourhood simultaneously blackened, if not by a cuttle-fish, by an equally singular accident.