e
arrival of the steam-carrier from Billingsgate to eat a hearty
breakfast.

This meal, it may be remarked, was a moveable feast, depending very much
on the duties in hand and the arrival of the steamer. To get the fish
ready and shipped for market is always regarded as his first and
all-important duty by the deep-sea trawler, who, until it is performed,
will not condescend to give attention to such secondary matters as food
and repose. These are usually taken when opportunity serves. Pipes and
recreation, in the form of games at cards, draughts, dominoes, and
yarns, are also snatched at intervals between the periods of severe
toil. Nevertheless, there are times when the fisherman's experience is
very different. When prolonged calms render fishing impossible, then
time hangs heavily on his hands, and--in regard to the fleet of which we
write and all those similarly circumstanced--the only recreations
available are sleeping, drinking, gambling, and yarn-spinning. True,
such calms do not frequently occur in winter, but they sometimes do, and
one of them prevailed on the afternoon of the particular winter's day,
of which we treat.

After the departure of the carrier that day, the wind fell so much that
the admiral deemed it advisable not to put down the nets. Before long
the light air died away altogether, and the fleet was left floating
idly, in picturesque groups and with flapping sails, on the glassy sea.

Among the groups thus scattered about, there was one smack which had
quietly joined the fleet when the men were busy transhipping or
"ferrying" the fish to the steam-carrier. Its rig was so similar to
that of the other smacks that a stranger might have taken it for one of
the fleet but the fishermen knew better. It was that enemy of souls,
that floating grog-shop, that pirate of the North Sea, the _coper_.

"Good luck to 'ee," muttered Joe Stubley, whose sharp, because
sympathetic, eye was first to observe the vessel.

"It's bad luck to _you_ anyhow," remarked Bob the cook, who chanced to
pass at the moment.

"Mind your own business, Lumpy, an' none o' your sauce, if you don't
want a rope's-endin'," retorted the man.

"Ain't I just mindin' my own business? Why, wot is sauce but part of a
cook's business?" returned the boy.

"I _won't_ go to her," thought Stephen Lockley, who overheard the
conversation, and in whose breast a struggle had been going on, for he
also had seen the _coper_, and, his case