It is a comparatively easy thing to shoot a trawl-net, but a long and laborious job for two men, straining at the winch, to wind it aboard again, with its load of fish, often very largely useless. So soon as the hauling up of the nets begins, myriads of sea-gulls, springing apparently from nowhere in particular, appear, with the instantaneous promptitude of a crowd in a quiet street of London when an accident has happened. Screaming and circling about, dipping instantaneously into the water, and rising up quickly, they often make daring snatches at the fish aboard. Surely there is nothing so sharp-eyed on earth, in air, or water, as a sea-gull, and nothing so greedy and insatiable. The sea-gull is the scavenger of the fisher towns and villages, and is not nice in his tastes. Nothing comes amiss to his hungry maw, from fresh fish down to stale, ancient enough to be a very monument of offence and a something beyond the worst experiences of a sanitary inspector; and the dead kittens and rats of the seaside communities form welcome side-dishes. The gulls’ turn, however, comes when the sorting of the nets begins. When the useless dog-fish are flung overboard they struggle and guzzle their fill: for, unfortunately for the fisherfolk, the dog-fish are never lacking, although the saleable fish may be often sadly to seek. But now dog-fish are often marketed as “flake.” The catch is generally a miscellaneous one of turbot, bream, plaice, whiting, hake, haddock, gurnet, sole, and brill, with a few lobsters, crabs, and eels, and when the undesirables among the fish, and the stones and the seaweed, are sorted out, frequently resolves itself into a dozen or so pair of soles, and a few baskets and “trunks” of other fish. The aristocracy of the catch are, of course, the turbot and the soles, but when a bad day’s trawling and a day of poor market prices come together, the day’s labour for three men may not bring the skipper more than twelve shillings and his two men four shillings apiece. [Illustration: BRIXHAM HARBOUR.]