eighbors at home. Charles Nordhoff, who followed a youth spent at sea
with a long life of honorable and brilliant activity in journalism,
describes the watchfulness of the fleet as he had often seen it:

"The fleet is the aggregate of all the vessels engaged in the mackerel
fishery. Experience has taught fishermen that the surest way to find
mackerel is to cruise in one vast body, whose line of search will then
extend over an area of many miles. When, as sometimes happens, a single
vessel falls in with a large 'school,' the catch is, of course, much
greater. But vessels cruising separately or in small squads are much less
likely to fall in with fish than is the large fleet. 'The fleet' is
therefore the aim of every mackerel fisherman. The best vessels generally
maintain a position to the windward. Mackerel mostly work to windward
slowly, and those vessels furthest to windward in the fleet are therefore
most likely to fall in with fish first, while from their position they can
quickly run down should mackerel be raised to leeward.

"Thus, in a collection of from six hundred to a thousand vessels, cruising
in one vast body, and spreading over many miles of water, is kept up a
constant, though silent and imperceptible communication, by means of
incessant watching with good spy-glasses. This is so thorough that a
vessel at one end of the fleet cannot have mackerel 'alongside,'
technically speaking, five minutes, before every vessel in a circle, the
diameter of which may be ten miles, will be aware of the fact, and every
man of the ten thousand composing their crews will be engaged in spreading
to the wind every available stitch of canvas to force each little bark as
quickly as possible into close proximity to the coveted prize."

To come upon the mackerel fleet suddenly, perhaps with the lifting of the
fog's gray curtain, or just as the faint dawn above the tossing horizon
line to the east began to drive away the dark, was a sight to stir the
blood of a lad born to the sea. Sometimes nearly a thousand vessels would
be huddled together in a space hardly more than a mile square. At night,
their red and green lights would swing rhythmically up and down as the
little craft were tossed by the long rollers of old Atlantic, in whose
black bosom the gay colors were reflected in subdued hues. From this
floating city, with a population of perhaps ten thousand souls, no sound
arises except the occasional roar of a breaking swell, the