When the ware is ready to be burned a smouldering peat or a handful of lighted straw is laid in the bottom of the pit. Over this dry ware is piled, slowly at first till the fire catches, and ever more rapidly as the red core of smouldering flame waxes. Sometimes ware and tangles are burned separately, but more frequently the kelper burns them together. The tangles make the stronger and better kelp. The pit is filled, and the ware or tangles are piled on till the mass rises two feet or more above the level of the earth. Then for six or eight hours it must be carefully watched and tended, and ever new fuel piled on to prevent a burst of flame. When tangles are being burnt alone, the kelper finishes off his pit with dried ware, as otherwise the tougher knots and lumps of the latest burned tangles would not be thoroughly consumed. Each pit holds about half a ton, and takes the best part of a summer day to burn, the actual time depending on the state of the wind and the condition of the weed. When at last it smoulders low, it is “raked” before being left to cool. One man takes a spade with a very small blade and a handle fully seven feet long, the lower half being of iron; two other workers, as often women as men, have “rakes,” implements not unlike a rough caricature of a golfer’s iron, but with handles as long as that of the spade. With these rakes the kelp is mixed and smoothed, while the spadesman turns it up from the bottom of the pit. Hard work it is and hot, great jets of flame shooting out under the spade from what looks like gray crumbling earth mingled with black ashes and white quartz; for the kelp assumes so many colours and forms that to describe it accurately were impossible. As the kelper turns and tosses the glowing mass on a warm June evening, he knows he has come near the end of that labour which began in the gray winter dawn, when the rolls of red-weed lashed about him amid the roaring backwash of the waves. When the kelp has been sufficiently mixed, the pit is levelled and smoothed over, all the outlying ashes are swept in with a handful of dry ware, and it is left to cool and harden. Then, as the kelpers turn homewards, the white sea fog creeps up by the rocks where all day long the kelp smoke drifted.