. That was blowin' a fresh o' wind, an' he jest lay down in the
lee scuppers, and 'I can't get no wetter, Posh,' he say, and let the
lipper slosh oover him. Ah! He was a master rum un, was my ole
guv'nor!"

The northern herring voyage of the _Meum and Tuum_ in 1869, that is to
say, the eight weeks' fishing down the east coast from Aberdeen to
Lowestoft from the beginning of August to the end of September, seems to
have been about up to what FitzGerald might have called "Neighbour's
fare." He wrote to Mrs. W. H. Thompson (the wife of the Master of
Trinity): "My lugger has had (along with her neighbours) such a Season
hitherto of Winds as no one remembers. We made 450 pounds in the North
Sea" (that is to say, in the north fishing before the home Martinmas
fishing began); "and (just for fun) I did wish to realise 5 pounds in my
pocket. But my Captain would take it all to pay Bills. But if he makes
another 400 pounds this Home Voyage! Oh, then we shall have money in our
pockets. I do wish this. For the anxiety about all these people's lives
has been so much more to me than all the amusement I have got from the
Business, that I think I will draw out of it if I can see my Captain
sufficiently firm on his legs to carry it on alone. True, there will
still be the same risk to him and his ten men, but they don't care; only
I sit here listening to the Winds in the Chimney, and always thinking of
the eleven hanging at my own finger ends" (_Letters_, II, 110, Eversley
Edition).

{A Lowestoft "Dandy": p116.jpg}

The number of hands on a herring drifter used to be eleven, which seemed
excessive till the labour of hauling nearly two miles of nets by hand is
remembered. Now that almost every drifter which goes into the North Sea
has a donkey engine to do the hardest work of the hauling the number
aboard the dandies is lessened to nine.

This letter to Mrs. Thompson is the first suggestion that FitzGerald has
any idea of ending the partnership, a suggestion which became fully
developed in 1870.

But before Posh was hard at it every day, fishing off the Norfolk coast,
his "guv'nor" wrote him a note in a much more cheerful strain. Indeed,
this is a letter by itself, unlike any other of the writer's which I have
seen, though (as Dr. Aldis Wright says) "FitzGerald never wrote a letter
like any one else." The power of throwing himself "into the picture,"
the humour of conscious imitation, were never more brilliantl