ill. Two hours and a half it lasted, until the great trawl-beam came
to the surface, and was got up on the vessel's side, after which these
indomitable men proceeded to claw up the huge net with their fingers,
straining and heaving with might and main.

"Yo, ho!" cried the skipper, "heave her in, boys!"

"Hoy!" growled Peter Jay, the mate, giving a tug that should have torn
the net to pieces--but didn't!

"Looks like as if we'd got hold of a lump o' wreck," gasped Bob Lumsden,
the smack's boy, who was also the smack's cook.

"No, no, Lumpy," remarked David Duffy, who was no respecter of names or
persons, "it ain't a wreck, it's a mermaid. I've bin told they weigh
over six ton when young. Look out when she comes aboard--she'll bite."

"I do believe it's old Neptune himself," said Jim Freeman, another of
the "hands." "There's his head; an' something like his pitchfork."

"It does feel heavier than I ever knowed it afore," remarked Fred
Martin.

"That's all along of your bein' ill, Fred," said the mate.

"It may be so," returned Martin, "for I do feel queer, an' a'most as
weak as a baby. Come heave away!"

It was indeed a huge mass of wreck entangled with sea-weed which had
rendered the net so heavy on that occasion, but there was also a
satisfactory mass of fish in the "cod-end," or bag, at the extremity of
the net, for, when, by the aid of the winch, this cod-end was finally
got inboard, and the cord fastening the bottom of it was untied, fish of
all kinds gushed over the wet decks in a living cataract.

There were a few expressions of satisfaction from the men, but not much
conversation, for heavy work had still to be done--done, too, in the
dark. Turbot, sole, cod, skate, and all the other treasures of the
deep, had to be then and there gutted, cleaned, and packed in square
boxes called "trunks," so as to be ready for the steam-carrier next
morning. The net also had to be cleared and let down for another catch
before daybreak.

Now it is just possible that it may never have occurred to the reader to
consider how difficult, not to say dangerous, must be the operation of
gutting, cleaning, and packing fish on a dark night with a smack dancing
a North Sea hornpipe under one's feet. Among the dangers are two which
merit notice. The one is the fisherman's liability, while working among
the "ruck," to run a sharp fish-bone into his hand, the other to gash
himself with his knife while attempting to operat