When the day's catch has been cared for in the manner just described the watch is set and all but two men turn in. These watches are regulated in such a manner that every man is on deck his part of the night hours. Breakfast is served at 3 o'clock in the morning, and off the men go again to their trawls. If it is foggy dinner is announced by the report of a ten-pound gun from the schooner. It is then about 10 o'clock. After dinner the fishers are away again and back about 4, when the fish which have been caught are split and salted as on the previous day. The only thing that relieves the monotony on board a Gloucester fishing smack is stormy weather or the coming of Sunday. This day is kept holy. Leaving the Grand Banks, let us cross over to the Georges Banks, where in the months of spring and summer we shall find Gloucester hand-liners, with crews of from eight to ten men fishing for mackerel. Every man is at the rail, as he fishes from the deck of the vessel. The tide runs so strong that nine-pound leads are necessary. Attached to each lead is a horse, a slingding, or spreader, and a pair of large hooks. Sometimes when fishing in thirty fathoms of water the great strength of the tide forces the men to pay out from sixty to ninety fathoms of line before the lead touches bottom. In front of each man, driven into the rail, is a wooden pin. This is termed the soldier, and it has an important duty. Every inch of the line is hauled across it. Were it not for these rail pins the lines would continually be fouled with one another. When a smack's crew chance upon a fresh school of mackerel their hooks have only to touch the water to be seized and swallowed. No time is lost in unhooking, but each fisherman hauls as fast as his hands can move until the fish appears in sight, when with one motion he is swung quickly over the rail into a barrel or heap and so dexterously that the hook disengages itself. When the fish continue plentiful the scene is a most exciting one. The long, lithe bodies of the fishermen eagerly bending over their work, the quick, nervous twitching at the line, followed by the steady strain, the rapid hand-over-hand haul that brings the prize to the surface, the easy swing with which he describes a circle in the air as the victor slaps him into his barrel and the flapping of the captives about deck, mingling with the merry laughter of the excited crew, make it a sport to which the efforts of the trout angler or the fowler with his double-barreled shotgun are but puny and insignificant in comparison.