It is now late in the afternoon. The day has changed for the worse--weather changes quick in these latitudes--and looks rather wild and windy, with promise of more to come before long. But your port is to leeward, so you need not be anxious, and you make up your minds to fish for pollack round the headlands and the islands at the mouth of the bay; for just before sundown is the best time of all, especially if it is about half flood. You take a reef down in both sails to make the boat slower and easier to handle, for you do not want to have to devote all your attention to keeping her right side up when you are fishing for pollack close in to the rocks. The tack is triced up so as to let the steerer see under it; a crutch is shipped on each side of the boat, and a couple of oars are cleared and made ready for instant use if required. One man stands up in the bows to look out for rocks, and also to attend to the peak halliards when called upon; two others handle the lines on which a red or a white india-rubber sand-eel has been substituted for the spinners; while the steerer takes tiller in one hand and mainsheet in the other, and concentrates all his faculties on regulating the pace of the boat, and going as near as he can to the rocks without incurring shipwreck or fouling the lines. [Illustration: The swoop of the gannet.] In this order you coast slowly along about twenty yards from the steep cliffs, running out occasionally to avoid reefs and shoal places, the steerer keeping the speed to something under three knots an hour by slacking the mainsheet and spilling the sail when the wind is abeam, and hauling it right in when it is aft, occasionally dropping the peak as well. Every now and then, generally off a point, you catch a fish, and when you do you go about to see if there are more in the same place. But fish seem scarce, and the sport is rather slow until you sail through a narrow channel between two islands. Then in a moment there is a heavy fish on each line, and no sooner are they hauled on board and the lines thrown out again than the same thing happens. You have struck fish at last in earnest. While the hooks are being disengaged up goes the peak, and you stand back close-hauled through the narrow channel. Backwards and forwards you go, again and again, with varying luck. Now you haul in two at a time, now you give a groan of dismay as a monster gets off as you are in the act of swinging him in. Sometimes the boat will not go fast enough to make the fish bite, and there is agony of mind; sometimes it _will_ go too fast. But on the whole the fishing is fast and furious, and you are all wild with excitement; and then--snap goes a snooding with a particularly big fish, and you must fish with one line till the other is refitted. The wind heads the boat off standing back through the channel this time; the centreboard hits a rock and bumps up into its case; there is no harm done, but alas! the remaining line gets foul of