s exceeding imagination, shoals on shoals. "Pull up now, there's
a heavy strike," cries the skipper, and the nets are hauled up, and come
in white and moving--a solid block of fish, cheep, cheep, cheeping like
birds in the early morning. At the grey of dawn the boats begin to run
for home, and the sun is shining as the fleet makes the harbour. Men and
women are waiting there to buy the night's catch. The quay is full of
them, bustling, shouting, laughing, quarrelling, counting the herrings,
and so forth.

THE FISHERMEN'S SERVICE

Such is the herring fishery of Man. Bishop Wilson knew how bitter a
thing it could be if this industry failed the island even for a single
season. So, with absolute belief in the Divine government of the world,
he wrote a Service to be held on the first day of the herring season,
asking for God's blessing on the harvest of the sea. The scene of that
service must have been wondrously beautiful and impressive. Why does not
some great painter paint it? Let me, by the less effectual vehicle of
words, attempt to realise what it must have been.

The place of it was Peel bay, a wide stretch of beach, with a gentle
slope to the left, dotted over with grey houses; the little town farther
on, with its nooks and corners, its blind alleys and dark lanes, its
narrow, crabbed, crooked streets. Behind this the old pier and the
herring boats rocking in the harbour, with their brown sails half set,
waiting for the top of the tide. In the distance the broad breast of
Contrary Head, and, a musket-shot outside of it, the little rocky islet
whereon stand the stately ruins of the noble old Peel Castle. The
beach is dotted over with people--old men, in their curranes and undyed
stockings, leaning on their sticks; children playing on the shingle;
young women in groups, dressed in sickle-shaped white sun-bonnets, and
with petticoats tucked up; old women in long blue homespun cloaks. But
these are only the background of the human picture. In the centre of
it is a wide circle of fishermen, men and boys, of all sizes and sorts,
from the old Admiral of the herring fleet to the lad that helps the
cook--rude figures in blue and with great sea-boots. They are on their
knees on the sand, with their knitted caps at their rusty faces, and
in the middle of them, standing in an old broken boat, is the Bishop
himself, bareheaded, white-headed, with upturned face praying for
the fishing season that is about to begin. The June da