, very
gently and continuously shaken by a very tired baby. Nothing was doing.
The air was a little too chilly for pleasure boating. Tony had gone to
'put away up over' the after-dinner hour. I lay down to read, and fell
asleep to the meg-meg of Mam Widger's voice chatting in a neighbour's
doorway.

Two or three small pebbles jumped through the open window. Uncle Jake
was below. When he says, on the Front, that he is going somewhere, he
may set off this week, next week, or never; but when he wakes one
up.... I hastened down.

[Sidenote: _PRAWNING WITH BOAT-NETS_]

"Going shrimpin' wi' the boat-nets," he said, flavouring, as it were, a
tit-bit in his mouth. "Must try and earn summut if I bean't going to
feel the pinch o' _thees_ winter." Then he added as if it were an
afterthought: "Be 'ee coming?"

"When?"

"Now--so sune as I can get enough bait. I've a-got a beautiful cod's
head towards it. Back about midnight, I daresay."

"All right."

"Put some clothes on your back. I'll bring a bottle o'tay--better than
brewers' tack--an' go'n get the boat ready. Take the _Moondaisy_.... Eh?"

Tony, just downstairs and still rubbing his eyes (when he snoozes he
goes right to bed), asked what was up. "Shrimping wi' Uncle Jake," I
replied. "That'll gie thee a doing!" he said. "Yu ask George. George
used to be Uncle Jake's mate. 'Tis, 'Back oar-for'ard--back wi'
inside--steady--steady--damn yer eyes!' George couldn't put up wi' it.
Jake don' never sleep hisself, and wuden' let he sleep."

The poor little _Moondaisy_, lying on ways at the water's edge, looked
as if she had a small deckhouse aft. Sixteen boat-nets,[19] with their
lines and corks, were piled up on the stern seats. In the stern-sheets
were two baskets, one of them very smelly, and a newspaper parcel that
reeked. Piled up in the bows were bits of old rope, sacks and bags
(very catty), chips of wood, empty tea-bottles, and all the litter that
collects in a boat used by Uncle Jake.

[19] Boat-nets are the same in construction as setting-nets (see
p. 192), but upwards of a yard in diameter. Instead of a cord and
stick, they have attached to them four or five fathoms of grass
line. A few small flat oval corks are spliced at short intervals
into the end of the line remote from the net, and at the
extremity is a cork buoy about half as large as a man's head.

"Where are we going?" I asked.

"_I_ knows; but if anybody asks yu wh