Master Dick, on to the sands, and it won't be long now."

"Take care, Dick, or you'll be overboard!" said Mr Temple.

"I should like to be, father; it isn't deep here?"

"Fathom!" said Josh shortly; "soon be half."

There was a regular sing-song kept up by the men who were hauling, and
the sands presented quite an exciting scene, for some sixty or seventy
of the men who had finished their task, with others who were ashore and
not busy, had collected to see the big fish taken in the seine.

"Why, there must be lots of fish in it yet," said Dick.

"Yes; plenty of mackerel left, and a many fish perhaps such as you never
saw before."

"Is she heavy, lads?" shouted the captain of the seine-boat.

"Ay, there be a sag o' fish in her yet aside the great un," was shouted
back.

"Steady, then! steady! and don't break the seine. Take your time!"

"Hadn't we better get ashore?" cried Dick; "we shall see better."

"No!" said Mr Temple; "I think our friend Josh is right. We are out of
the way of the men here and dry. Look, boys, look! there is something
big in the net indeed!"

For as he was speaking there was a tremendous commotion, the water was
splashed up, and for a moment it seemed as if whatever caused the
disturbance had escaped.

But it was not so, though the limits of its prison were growing narrower
minute by minute as the ends of the net were gathered on to the sand,
and laid at the water's edge like a great soft ridge of brown sea-weed.

The curve of the net was now reduced to fifty feet, and soon it was not
above forty; and at this stage of the proceedings what with the weight
being collected in such narrow limits, and the water being so shallow,
the captain became doubtful of its bearing so tremendous a strain as
would be caused by its being hauled bodily ashore, so about twenty men
waded in behind the great bag that it formed, and at the word of command
as two parties hauled at either end they stooped down, and gathering up
a fair quantity of the tightened net in their hands, they too helped,
and the thirty or forty feet of shallow water was soon covered, the
seine being dragged so that the lead or bottom-line was drawn right on
to dry land, and the cork-line raised so that there was a fence of net
some three feet above the top of the water, and in the long shallow
pool, whose bottom was net, there were the fish by the thousand, rushing
to and fro, leaping over each other, and showing flashes of silv