'Tain't right like. 'Tain't right!"

4

"Go shrimping wi' the setting-nets t'night, I reckon," said Uncle Jake.
"Tide be low 'tween twelve and one o'clock. Jest vitty, that."

It was one of those evenings, wind WSW., when the sea and sky look
stormier than they are, or will be. Uncle Jake stood on the very edge
of the sea wall, his hands in his pockets, his torn jumper askew, and
his old cap cocked over one ear. From time to time he turned half round
to deride a dressy visitor, or for warmth's sake twisted his body about
within his clothing, or shrugged his shoulders humorously with a, "'Tis
a turn-out o'it!" The seine net had just been shot from the beach for
less than a sovereign's worth of fish--to be divided, one third for the
owner of the net and the remainder among the seven men who had lent a
hand.

[Sidenote: _PRAWNING_]

"Coo'h!" Uncle Jake exclaimed. "_'Tis_ a crib here! Nort 't all doing.
Not like 't used tu be. I mind when yu cude haul in a seine so full
as.... Might pick up a shilling or tu t'night shrimping, if they damn
visitors an' bloody tradesmen an't been an' turned the whole o' Broken
Rocks up an' down. _I_ tells 'em o'it!"

"Shrimps or prawns, d'you mean?"

"Why, prawns! Us calls it shrimping hereabout. You knows that. There's
prawns there if yu knows where to look, but not like 't used to be.
On'y they fules don' know where to look. An' they don' see Jake at it,
an' I never tells 'em what I gets nor what I sells at; an' so they says
I don' never du nort. I'd like to see they hae tu work waist-deep in
water every night for a week when they'm sixty-five. An' in the winter
tu!--If yu'm minded to come t'night, yu be up my house 'bout 'leven
o'clock, an' I'll fetch me nets from under cliff if they b----y b----rs
o' boys an't been there disturbin' of 'em."

Uncle Jake's cottage looks outside like a small cellar that has somehow
risen above the ground and then has been thatched with old straw and
whitewashed. Inside, it is a shadowy place, stacked up high with
sailing and fishing gear, flotsam, jetsam, balks of wood and all the
odds and ends that he picks up on his prowlings along the coast. With
tattered paper screens, he has partitioned off, near the fire and
window, a small and very crowded cosy-corner. There he was sitting when
I arrived; bread, butter, onions, sugar and tea--his staple foods--on
the round table beside him, and his prawn-nets on the flagstones at his
feet. Three cats glide