Chapter 7

MRS WIDGER'S DIPLOMACY

Mrs Widger it was who had the row over George's spree, but not with George, and owing to her clever diplomacy it was hardly a row at all.

Mabel rushed into the house at breakfast-time.

"Mother, is George come home?"

"Course he is. What next?"

"Well, Lottie Rousdon says as he come'd home last night an' yu an' Dad wuden' let 'en in. Drunk's a handcart, falling about, her says he was."

"Tis a lie!" began Mrs Widger loudly. Then she appeared to think of something; her eyes widened, and she spoke quietly.

"Who told yu thic tale?"

"Why, May Rousdon jest as I was coming in now. Her stopped me an' asked if what Lottie'd told her was true."

"Yu go an' tell Lottie Rousdon that if she has a minute to spare when she comes home this afternoon to clean herself [Lottie Rousdon is a day servant], as mother'd like to see her. Don't yu"—this with rising voice—"don't yu tell anything more'n that or I'll break your neck for yu."

Mabel rushed out full of importance.

"The lying bitch!" remarked Mam Widger.

Lottie Rousdon walked into the trap. She came in the early evening, feathers flying, very innocent. She was in a strange house, not in the Square or among her relatives. Mrs Widger was on her own ground. Both went into the front room.

"What for did yu—" we could not help hearing.

"Oh, I didn't, Mrs Widger; I'm sure I didn't——"

"Yu did!"

"Mabel," called Mrs Widger. "Go'n ask May Rousdon to kindly step this way."

May Rousdon came.

"Who told yu what yu told Mabel about George, this morning? Didyumake it up?"

"'Twas Lottie told me, Mrs Widger."

"There! if I didn't think.... Don't yu ever say such a wicked thing again! Yu don' know what harm...."

The parlour door was shut fast. A hubbub went on within. After a time, Lottie, weeping, was led out of the house by her sister.

"The lying bitch," Mrs Widger repeated. "I've a-give'd it to her. Making up that tale so pat as if 'twas all true! That's the sort o' thing they used to put about when Tony and me was first married, but I fought 'em down, I did, an' I thought 'twas all stopped long ago. They tried to make out as 'twas me drove George to sea. Nobody can't ever say I haven't luked after Tony's first wife's children so well as I have me own—but theyhavesaid it, all the same, an' I've up an' give'd it to 'em 'fore now. Whenever I used to correct the children, they'd only to run out o' the house an' they cude always find someone to listen to 'em and say as I was cruel to 'em and God knows what. One time, when I wasn't very well, I felt I cuden' put up wi' it any longer. But I did. An' here I be, same's ever. Pretty times us used to have, I can tell yu, when we was first married an' some of 'em put my blood up!"

I understand that she cursed several—literally kicked one or two—out of the house; but now when anybody is ill, or anything has to be done, she is the first person to be sent for; and when George said goodbye to her at the station, he wept.

IN THE BAR

I was in the Alexandra bar this evening, drinking bitter ale. Apart from the new saloon counter, it is an old-fashioned place, full of wooden partitions and corners and draughts. The incandescent light was flickering dimly in the draught that the sea-wind drove through the window and the front door. Seated around the fireplace or against the painted partitions, and standing about in groups, were fishermen in guernseys, ex-fishermen, some bluejackets, and some solid-looking men who were pensioners or sailors in mufti. A couple of repulsive lodging-house keepers (they eat too much that falls from the lodgers' tables) were talking local politics with a foxy-faced young tradesman of the semi-professional sort. The barman, who had had enough to drink, was thumb-fingered, loud-voiced, hastily slow. Sometimes the sound of a heavier wave than usual broke through the buzz of conversation, and sometimes, when the conversation dropped, wave after wave could be heard sweeping the shingle along the beach.

A party of vagrant minstrels came to the front-door steps. They played a comic song, and the voices within rose in defiance of the music, so that when it stopped suddenly, they were surprised into silence.

Up through that silence welled the opening notes of Schubert'sSerenade. Nobody spoke. The barman took up a glass cheerily. "My doctor ordered me to take a little when I feel I need it," he said; and washusheddown. Some edged towards the door, others sat back with faces and pipes tilted up, and others gazed down at the floor. A memory-struck, far-away look came into their eyes. Only the barman with his glass, and the tradesman in his smart suit, seemed wholly themselves.

TheSerenadeceased. None spoke. The light gave a great flicker. "What the bloody hell!" exclaimed John Widger. The day-dreamers awoke, as if from a light sleep. An everyday look came quickly into their eyes and each one shifted in his seat. Some even shook themselves like dogs. A joke was made about the woman who came in to collect pence, and the conversation rose till nothing of the sea's noise could be heard.

I realised with a shock that in four days I shall not be here, and when I left the bar, I forgot entirely to sayGood-night.

A GLIMPSE

It was as if, for the moment, we had all been very intimate; as if we had all gone an adventure together and had peeped over the edge of the world.

VIII

Salisbury,January.

CONTRASTS

Chilliness—a social and emotional chilliness that can with difficulty be defined or nailed down to any cause—is, above and below all, what one feels on returning from a poor man's house into middle-class surroundings. It is not unlike that chill with which certain forms of metropolitan hospitality strike a countryman. He meets a London friend, a former fellow-townsman, perhaps, who has migrated to London and whom he has not seen for a year or two. "Glad to see you," says the Londoner. "You must call on my wife before you go back. Her day is Wednesday." Or, "You must come to dinner one evening. When are you free? Next Tuesday? or Friday?" If the hospitality had begun forthwith, and the countryman had been haled off, country fashion, to the very next pot-luck meal, he would have had a pleasant adventure. It would have been like old times. The former glow of friendship would have more than revived. But the calculated invitation for a future date, the idea that the countryman will like to call for a twenty minutes' chat on generalities and a couple of cups of bad afternoon tea.... Though he may understand that a multiplicity of engagements in London renders this sort of thing convenient, he none the less feels a chill when it is applied to himself, and usually cares little whether he go or not. He becomes conscious of the desire to save trouble, which is at the bottom of such calculations. Had the Londoner revisited the country, he would have found old friends ready to upset all their arrangements for the sake of entertaining him. The London hospitality is the 'better done,' but country hospitality is warmer. Middle-class life runs smoother than the poor man's, it is more arranged and in many ways 'better done,' and it is chillier precisely because, for smooth running, the warmer human impulses, both good and bad, must be repressed. 'Something with a little love and a little murder' in it, was what the illiterate old woman wanted to learn to read. It is what we all want in our hearts, much more than smooth running and impenetrable uniform politeness.

Down at Seacombe we warm our hands, so to speak, at the fire of life; hunger lurks outside, and the fire is dusty and needs looking after; but it glows, and we sit together round it. Here at Salisbury, throughout the social house, we have an installation of hot-water pipes; they may be hygienic (which is doubtful), and they are little trouble to keep going; but they don't glow. Give me the warmth that glows, and let me get near the heart of it.

Voices are often raised in Under Town and quarrels are not infrequent, but the underlying affections are seldom doubted, and when they do rise to the surface, there they are, visible, unashamed. 'Each for himself, and devil take the hindmost,' is more admired in theory than followed in practice. 'Each for himself and the Almighty for us all,' is Tony's way of putting it. The difference lies there.

My acquaintances here are well off for the necessities of life. No one is likely to starve next week. Nevertheless, they are full of worry, and by restraining their expressions of worry so as not to become intolerable to the other worriers, they make themselves the more lonely and increase their panic of mind. They are afraid of life.

At Seacombe, though there were not a fortnight's money in the house, we lived merrily on what we had. In Tony's "Summut 'll sure to turn up if yu be ready an' tries to oblige" there is more than philosophy; there is race tradition, the experience of generations. The Fates are treacherous; therefore, of course, they like to be trusted, and the gifts they reserve for those that trust them are retrospective.

INSTANCES

All of us at Tony's wanted many things—a pension, enough to live on, work, a piano, or only 'jam zide plaate'—God knows what we didn't want! But the things that men haven't, and want, unite them more than those they have.I wantis life's steam-gauge; the measure of its energy. It is the ground-bass of love, however transcendentalised, and whether it give birth to children or ideas.I haveis stagnant. AndI am afraidis the beginning of decay.

It is stillI want, rather thanI am afraid, that spurs the poor man on.

For his first marriage and towards setting up house, Tony succeeded in saving twenty shillings. He gave it to his mother in gold to keep safely for him, and the day before the wedding, he asked for it. "Yu knows we an't got no bloody sovereigns," said his father. It had all been spent in food and clothes for the younger children. So Tony went to sea that night and earned five shillings. A shilling of that too he gave to his mother; then started off on foot for the village where his girl was living and awaiting him. She had a little saved up: he knew that, though he feared it might have gone like his. They were married, however; they fed, rejoiced, and joked; and 'for to du the thing proper like,' they hired a trap to drive them home. With what money was left they embarked on married life, and their children made no unreasonable delay about coming. "Aye!" says Tony, "I'd du the same again—though 'twas hard times often."

Before I left Seacombe I asked a fisherman's wife, who was expecting her sixth or seventh child, whether she had enough money in hand to go through with it all; for I knew that her husband was unlikely to earn anything just then. "I have," she said, "an' p'raps I an't. It all depends. If everything goes all right, I've got enough to last out, but if I be so ill as I was wi' the last one, what us lost, then I an't. Howsbe-ever, I don't want nort now. Us'll see how it turns out." She went on setting her house in order, preparing baby linen and making ready to 'go up over,' with perfect courage and tranquillity. When one thinks of the average educated woman's fear of childbed, although she can have doctors, nurses, anæsthetics and every other alleviation, the contrast is very great, more especially as the fisherman's wife had good reason to anticipate much pain and danger, in addition to the possibility of her money giving out.

Those are not extraordinary instances, chosen to show how courageous people can be sometimes; on the contrary, they are quite ordinary illustrations of a general attitude among the poor towards life. To express it in terms of a theory which in one form or another is accepted by nearly all thinkers—the poor have not only theWill to Live, they have theCourage to Live.

THE COURAGE TO LIVE

On the whole, they possess theCourage to Livemuch more than any other class. And they need it much more. The industrious middle-class man, the commercial or professional man, works with a reasonable expectation of ending his days in comfort. He would hardly work without. But the poor man's reasonable expectation is the workhouse, or some almost equally galling kind of dependency. The former may count himself very unlucky if after a life of work he comes to destitution; the latter is lucky if he escapes it. Yet the poor man works on, and is of at least as good cheer as the other one. If he can rub along, he is even happy. He is, I think, the happier of the two.

The more intimately one lives among the poor, the more one admires their amazing talent for happiness in spite of privation, and their magnificent courage in the face of uncertainty; and the more also one sees that these qualities have been called into being, or kept alive, by uncertainty and thriftlessness. Thrift, indeed, may easily be an evil rather than good. From a middle-class standpoint, it is an admirable virtue to recommend to the poor. It helps to keep them off the rates. But for its proper exercise, thrift requires a special training and tradition. And from the standpoint of the essential, as opposed to the material, welfare of the poor, it can easily be over-valued. Extreme thrift, like extreme cleanliness, has often a singularly dehumanising effect. It hardens the nature of its votaries, just as gaining what they have not earned most frequently makes men flabby. Thrift, as highly recommended, leads the poor man into the spiritual squalor of the lower middle-class. It is all right as a means of living, but lamentable as an end of life. If a penny saved is a penny earned, then a penny earned by work is worth twopence.

The Courage to Liveis the blossom of theWill to Live—a flower far less readily grown than withered. It might be argued that since apprehensiveness implies foresight, the poor man'sCourage to Liveis simply his lack of forethought. In part, no doubt, it is that. But he does think, slowly and tenaciously, as a cuttlefish grips. He foresees pretty plainly the workhouse; and he has the courage to face its probability, and to go ahead nevertheless. His reading of life is in some ways very broad, his foothold very firm; for it is founded closely on actual experience of the primary realities. He looks backwards as well as forwards; his fondness and memory for anecdote is evidence of how he dwells on the past; instead of comparing an occurrence with something in a book, he recalls a similar thing that happened to So-and-so, so many years ago, you mind.... He knows vaguely (and it is our vaguer knowledge which shapes our lives) that only by a succession of miracles a long series of hair's-breadth escapes and lucky chances, does he stand at any moment where he is; and he doesn't see why miracles should suddenly come to an end. Hence his active fatalism, as opposed to the passive Eastern variety. In Tony's opinion, "'Tis better to be lucky than rich." I have never heard him say that fortune favours the brave. He assumes it.

INTELLECTUAL TYRANNIES

As one grows more democratic in feeling, as one's faith in the people receives shock after shock, yet on the whole brightens—so does one's mistrust of the so-called democratic programmes increase. One becomes at once more dissatisfied and less, more reckless and much more cautious. One sees so plainly that the three or four political parties by no means exhaust the political possibilities. The poor, though indeed they have the franchise, remain little more than pawns in the political game. They have to vote for somebody, and nobody is prepared to allow them much without a full return in money or domination. They pay in practice for what theoretically is only their due. Justice for them is mainly bills of costs. The political fight lies still between their masters and would-be masters; not so much now, perhaps, between different factions of property-owners as between the property-owners and the intellectuals. Out of the frying-pan into the fire seems the likely course; for the intellectuals, if they have the chance, enslave the whole man; they are logical and ruthless. The worst tyrannies have been priestly tyrannies, whether of Christians, Brahmins or negro witch-doctors; and those priests were the intellectuals of their time. I wonder when we shall have a party of intellectuals content to find out the people's ideals and to serve them faithfully, instead of trying to foist their own ideals upon the people.

Law-makers, however, will probably continue to work for the supposed benefit of the people rather than on the people's behalf; and equally, the supposed welfare of the people will continue to be the handiest political weapon; for the property-owning, articulate classes are better able to prevent themselves being played with. To those two facts one's political principles must be adjusted. The articulate classes, moreover, are actually so little acquainted with the inner life of the poor that there is no groundwork of general knowledge upon which to base conclusions, and it is impossible to do more than speak from one's own personal experience. I don't mind confessing that, though I should prefer justice all round, yet, if injustice is to be done—as done it must be no doubt—I had rather the poor were not the sufferers. There is no reason to believe that present conditions cannot be bettered—to believe, with Dr Pangloss,que tout est au mieux dans ce meilleur des mondes possibles. I have found that to grow acquainted with the class that is the chief object of social legislation is to see more plainly the room for improvement, and also to see how much better, how much sounder, that class is than it appeared to be from the outside: how much might be gained, of material advantage especially, and at the same time how much there is to be lost of those qualities of character which have been acquired through long training and by infinite sacrifice. To learn to care for the poor, for their own sake, is to fear for them nothing so much as slap-dash, short-sighted social legislation.

THE WILL TO LIVE

The man matters more than his circumstances. The poor man'sCourage to Liveis his most valuable distinctive quality. Most of his finest virtues spring therefrom. Any material progress which tends to diminish hisCourage to Live, or to reduce it to mereWill to Live, must prove in the long run to his and to the nation's disadvantage. And theCourage to Live, like other virtues, diminishes with lack of exercise. Therefore every material advance should provide for the continued, for an even greater, exercise and need of theCourage to Live. If not, then the material advance is best done without.

That is the main constructive conclusion to be drawn. Somewhat akin to it is another conclusion of a more critical nature.

In Nietzsche'sBeyond Good and Evilthere is an apophthegm to the effect that, "Insanity in individuals is something rare—but in groups, parties, nations, and epochs it is the rule." And whilst, on the one hand mental specialists have been extending the boundaries of insanity to the point of justifying the popular adage that everyone is a bit mad, they have, on the other hand, tended to narrow down the difference between sanity and its reverse until it has become almost entirely a question of mental inhibition, or self-control.

The highest aim of Mental Hygiene should be to increase the power of mental inhibition amongst all men and women. Control is the basis of all law and the cement of every social system among men and women, without which it would go to pieces....Sufficient power of self-control should be the essence and test of sanity.20

SOCIAL HYGIENE

It is too gratuitously assumed by law-makers (i.e.agitators for legislation as well as legislators) that the poor man is woefully deficient in inhibition and must be legislated for at every turn. Because, for instance, he furnishes the police courts with the majority of 'drunks and disorderlies,' he is treated as a born drunkard, to be sedulously protected against himself, regardless of such facts as (1) there is more of him to get drunk, (2) he prefers 'going on the bust' to the more insidious dram-drinking and drugging, (3) he has more cause to get drunk, (4) he gets drunk publicly, (5) tied-house beer and cheap liquors stimulate to disorderliness more than good liquor. The truth is that the poor have a great deal of self-restraint, quite as much probably as their law-makers; but it is exercised in different directions and, possibly, is somewhat frittered away in small occasions. The poor man has so much more bark than bite. He fails to restrain his cuss-words for example—but then cuss-words were invented to impress fools. There is much in his life that would madden his law-makers, andvice versa. If control is the cement of every social system and if it is the highest aim of mental hygiene, it follows that control should be the highest aim of legislation and custom, which together make up social hygiene. And—always remembering that control is of all virtues the one which strengthens with use and withers with disuse—every piece of new legislation should be most carefully examined as to its probable effect on the self-control of the people. Control, in short should be the paramount criterion of new legislation. A proximate advantage, unless it be a matter of life and death, is too dearly purchased by an ultimate diminution of self-control.

Since the Industrial Revolution and rise of the press, the middle-class has become more and more the real law-maker. The poor have voted legislators into power; the upper class in the main has formally made the laws; but the engineering of legislation has been, and is, the work of the middle class. And the amusing and pathetic thing is that the middle class has used its power to try to make other classes like itself. That it has succeeded so badly is largely due to the fact that the poor man is not simply an undeveloped middle-class man. The children at Seacombe showed true childish penetration in treating agentry-boyas an animal of another species: the poor and the middle class are different in kind as well as in degree. (More different perhaps than the poor and the aristocrat). Their civilizations are not two stages of the same civilization, but two civilizations, two traditions, which have grown up concurrently, though not of course without considerable intermingling. To turn a typical poor man into a typical middle-class man is not only to develop him in some respects, and do the opposite in others; it is radically to alter him. The civilization of the poor may be more backward materially, but it contains the nucleus of a finer civilization than that of the middle class.

TWO CIVILIZATIONS

The two classes possess widely dissimilar outlooks. Their morale is different. Their ethics are different.21Middle class people frequently make a huge unnecessary outcry, and demand instant unnecessary legislation because they find among the poor conditions which would be intolerable to themselves but are by no means so to the poor. And again, the benevolent frequently accuse the poor of great ingratitude because, at some expense probably, they have pressed upon the poor what they themselves would like, but what the poor neither want nor are thankful for. The educated can sometimes enter fully, and even reasonably, into the sorrows of the uneducated, but it is seldom indeed that they can enter into their joys and consolations.

Broadly speaking, the middle-class is distinguished by the utilitarian virtues; the virtues, that is, which are means to an end; the profitable, discreet, expedient virtues: whereas the poor prefer what Maeterlinck calls 'the great useless virtues'—useless because they bring no apparent immediate profit, and great because by faith or deeply-rooted instinct we still believe them of more account than all the utilitarian virtues put together.22

The poor, one comes to believe firmly, if not interfered with by those who happen to be in power, are quite capable of fighting out their own salvation. A clear ring is what they want—the opportunity for their 'something in them tending to good' to develop on its own lines. (When I say 'a clear ring' I do not mean that one side should have seconds and towels provided and that the other side should be left with neither.) That their culture, so developed, will be different from our present middle-class culture, is certain; that it will be superior is probable. The middle class is in decay, for its reproductive instincts are losing their effective intensity, and it is afraid of having children; its culture, that it grafted on the old aristocratic stem, must decay with it. When the culture derived from the lower classes is ready to be grafted in its turn upon the old stem it is possible that mankind's progress will go backwards a little to find its footing, and will then take one of its great jumps forward.

THE SOCIO-POLITICAL PROBLEM

The socio-political problem turns out, on ultimate analysis, to be a wide restatement of the old theological Problem of Pain. Suffering does not necessarily make a fine character, but the characters that we recognise as fine could not, apparently, have been so without suffering. It is possible to say, "I have suffered, and though I am scarred and seared, yet I know that on the whole I am the better for that suffering. I do not now wish that I had not had that suffering. I even desire that those I love shall suffer so much as they can bear, that their conquest may be the greater, their joys the fuller, and their life the more intense." Nevertheless, the very next moment, the same man will try by every means possible to avoid suffering for himself and for those he loves. That is the dualism which dogs humanity in the mass no less than in the individual. That lies at the core of domestic politics. But it may be that the part of our nature which finds reason to be grateful for past suffering is higher than that part which seeks to avoid it in the future.

Waste of the benefits of suffering is waste indeed.

Seacombe,December.

We hired a drosky—one of the little light landaus that they use with a single horse in this hilly district—and thus we came down from the station. On the box were the coachman (grinning), a cabin trunk, a portmanteau, a gaping gladstone bag, and a rug packed with sweaters and boots. On the front seat, a large parcel of books, a typewriter, a dispatch case, a grubby moon-faced little friend of Tommy's, Tommy himself, and Jimmy. On the back seat, Straighty, Dane and myself. The small boy stood up on the seat, and Dane squatting on his haunches, overtopped us all.

Down the hill we drove, swerving, wobbling, laughing—a May party in leafless winter. Dane, in his efforts to lick the children's faces, tumbled off his perch. We helped him back to his seat amid a chorus of happy screams. The grubby boy was just too astonished to cry, just too proud of travelling in a carriage. He screwed up his face—and unscrewed it again. Every now and then Tommy sat back as far as he could from the disorder, the collection of jerking arms and legs, in order to adjust the Plymouth spectacles, of which he is so proud, on his small pug nose. As we passed the cross-roads, Straighty was trying to snatch a kiss. While we drove along the Front, the children waved their hands over the sides of the drosky, and shouted with delight. 'Twas a Bacchanal with laughter for wine. The Square turned out to witness our arrival. "Her's come!" the kiddies cried. Dane leapt out first, found a rabbit's head and bolted it whole. The rest of us scrambled out. The luggage was piled up in the passage. Hastening in his stockinged feet (he had been putting away an hour) to say that he was on the point of coming up to station, Tony bruised a toe and barked a shin. But it was no time to be savage. I wonder where else the two shillings I paid for the drosky would have purchased so much delight. Or rather, the delight was in ourselves, in the children; the two shillings served only to unlock it.

CHILDREN

What precisely there is of difference between these children and those of the middle and upper classes has always puzzled me. That there is a difference I feel certain. A few years ago, when I had so much to do with the boys and girls of a high school, they liked me pretty well, I think, and trusted me, but they did not take to me, nor I very greatly to them. They went about their business, and I about mine. If I invited them for a walk, they came gladly, not because it was a walk with me, but because I knew of interesting muddy places, and where to find strange things. Their manners to me were always good: good manners smoothed our intercourse. But in no sense were our lives interwoven. We were side-shows, the one to the other. I was content that it should be so, and they were too.

Here, on the other hand, my difficulty is to get rid of the children when I wish to go out by myself. They follow me out to the Front, and meet me there when I return, running towards me with shouting and arms upraised, tumbling over their own toes, and taking me home as if I were a huge pet dog of theirs. "Where be yu going?" they ask, and, "Where yu been?" Jimmy regards me as a fixture. "When yu goes away for two or dree days," he says, "I'll write to 'ee, like Dad du." I cross the Square, and some child, lolling over the board across a doorway, laughs to me shrilly and waves its arms. If by taking thought, I could send such a glow to the hearts of those I love, as that child, without thinking, sends to mine.... But I cannot. I can only wave a hand back to the child, and be thankful and full-hearted. Often enough I wish I could have a piano and find out whether my fingers will still play Chopin, Beethoven, and Bach; often I hanker after a sight of a certain picture or a certain statue in the Louvre or Luxembourg, for a concert, a theatre, a right-down good argument on some intellectual point, or for the books I want to read and never shall. Yet, all in all, I am never sorry for long. This children's babble and laughter, these simple, commonplace, wonderful affections, are a hundred times worth everything I miss.

It is not that I buy the children bananas or give them an infrequent ha'penny. When bananas and ha'pence are scarce, their love is no less. It is not that I am always good-tempered and jolly. Sometimes I snap unmercifully, so that they look at me with scared, inquiring eyes. It is not that they are always well-behaved. Frequently they are very naughty indeed. The causes of our sympathy lie deeper.

They are more naïve than the children who are in process of being well-educated; more independent and also more dependent. They feel more keenly any separation from those they love; they cry lustily if their mother disappears only for an hour or two; and nevertheless they can fend for themselves out and about as children more carefully nurtured could never do. Less able to travel by themselves, they do travel alone, and in the end quite as successfully. They make more mistakes and retrieve them better. Affection with them more rapidly and frankly translates itself into action. They laugh quickly, cry quickly, swear quickly. "Yu'm a fule!" they rap out without a moment's hesitation; and I suppose I am, else they wouldn't want to say so. Perhaps I overvalue the physical manifestations of love, but if a child will take my hand, or climb upon my knee, or kiss me unawares, then to certainty of its affection is added a greater contentment and a deeper faith. The peace of a child that sleeps upon one's shoulder, is given also to oneself. The appurtenances of love mean much to me; nearness, warmth, caresses. But I cannot make the advances; I was bred in a different school where, though frankness was encouraged,naïvetéwas repressed; and I am the more grateful to these children for taking me in hand—for being able to do so.

MANNERS

Tommy has returned from the Plymouth Eye Infirmary much quietened down in many respects and, as most people would say, much better mannered. He is neater and a better listener to conversation. He puts his shoes under the table, does not throw them. But he has brought back also some of the nurses' exclamations of surprise—"Oh, I say!" "Not I!" "You don't say so!" "What idiocy!" and the like. No doubt those expressions sounded quite proper among the nurses, but on Tommy's lips they seem curiously more vulgar than his natural and rougher expletives. It is, besides, as if one were eavesdropping outside the nurses' common room.

Much of the charm of these children, and of the grown-ups too, lies in the fact that, apart from a few points on which etiquette is very strict, they have no manners. I don't mean that they are bad-mannered; quite the contrary; what I mean is that their manners are not codified. Having no rules for behaviour under various circumstances, they must on each occasion act according to their kindliness and desire to please, or the reverse. They must go back to the first principles of manners. What they are, that they appear. What they feel at the moment, that they show. The kind man or child is kindly; the brutal or spiteful by nature are brutal or spiteful in manner. Elsewhere, among people of breeding, manners make the man—and hide him. Here, the man makes his own manners, and in so doing still further reveals himself.

I have known a professional man who was rather well-spoken of for his good manners, fail lamentably so soon as he found himself in surroundings not his own. His code of manners did not apply there, and outside his code he had no manners. He was excessively rude. He showed at once that his customary good manners were founded on rules well learnt, and not on any real consideration for other people's feelings. The incredible impertinence of clergymen and district visitors furnishes plenty of cases in point. Their manners, no doubt, are pretty good among themselves. Yet it is a common saying here, "What chake they gentry've got!" A 'district lady' entered Mrs Stidson's cottage without knock or warning, just when Mrs Stidson was cleaning up and wanted no visitors of any sort. "What's the matter with your eye?" asked the district lady. Mrs Stidson refused to answer. ("Untidy, intractable woman!") But a neighbour upspoke and said, "Tis her husband, mam, as have give'd her a black eye." At which the district lady exclaimed, "My good woman, why don't you leave him. Yououghtto leave him—at once!" Mrs Stidson has a number of young children.

TONY'S FOOT IN IT

It might have been expected, on the other hand, when Tony and myself went on holiday up-country, stayed at a largish much-upholstered hotel, and dined out several times as he had never done before, that he would have been like a fish out of water, very awkward, and would have committed a number of badfaux pas. Nothing of the sort. He was nervous, certainly, and the numerous knives, forks and glasses somewhat confused him at first. But Tony's good manners are not codified. He is sensitive, kindly, desirous of pleasing, quick to observe. On that basis, he invented for himself, according to the occasion, the manners he had not been taught. At the same time he remained himself. And he was a complete success. Nobody had any reason to blush on Tony's behalf. Except once; when he remarked to some ladies after dinner that he found Londoners very nice and free-like; that a pretty young lady had stopped him in the Strand the evening before, and had called him Percy; that he hadn't had time to tell her she'd made a mistake, and that, in fact, he might have knowed her tu Seacombe, only he didn't recollect.

There was a bad pause.

Tony doesn't think ill of anybody without cause.Honi soit qui mal y pensemight very well behismotto.

News has come along from Plymouth that the boats there have fallen in with large shoals of herring. The air here has since been charged with excitement—the excitement of men who earn their livelihood by gambling with the sea. The drifters have fitted out. Most of the boats are up over—lying on the sea wall—but a few days ago many busy blue men slid the big brown drifters down their shoots to the beach. Looking along, one saw a couple of men standing in each drifter and, with the leisurely haste of seamen, drawing in their nets. It gave a peculiar savour, a hopeful animation, to the blank wintry sea. It was as if the spring had come to us human beings prematurely, before it was ready to seize on nature.

ON THE CLIFFS

Yesterday afternoon I felt too unwell to lend a hand in shoving off the boats. So I climbed to the top of the East Cliff. The air was cool and still—so still that all the Seacombe smoke hung in the valley and drifted slowly to seawards and faded there. While the sun was setting behind a bank of sulky dull clouds, some woolpacks, faintly outlined in white against the grey, rose almost imperceptibly in the western sky. Everything, the sea itself, seemed very dry. Nothing moved on the cliffs, except some small birds which flittered homelessly among the black and twisted burnt gorse. They were very tiny and pitiful against, or indeed amid, the solemn gathering of the great slow clouds. On looking down from the edge of the cliff, a slight mistiness of the air gave one the impression that there was, lying level above the sea, a sheet of glass that dulled the sound of the water yet allowed one to discern every half-formed ripple, and even the purple of the rocks beneath. Five hundred feet below and a quarter of a mile out, were three boats. They also, like the birds, seemed pitifully tiny. But, unlike the birds, they did not seem purposeless. It was evident they were moving, though one could not see rowers, oars, or splashes, for they progressed in short jumps and above the dulled rattle of a billow breaking on the pebbles, the faint click-thud of oars between thole-pins was plainly audible. I had an odd fancy that the six men were rowing through immensity, into eternity, to meet God; and that they would so continue rowing, eternally.

This morning, very early, the crackle of burning wood in the kitchen fireplace awoke me. Then I heard the sea roaring; then Tony's bare feet on the stairs. "Wind's backed an' come on to blow," he said. "They've a-had to hard up an' urn for it. Two on 'em's in, an' one have a-losted two nets. I told 'em 'twasn't vitty when they shoved off. 'Tis blowing hard. I be going out along to see w'er t'other on 'em's in eet."

The sea was angry, the moon obscure. The dead-asleep town stood up motionless before the madly-living breakers. It seemed as if a horrible fight was in progress; loud rage and dumb treachery face to face in the semi-darkness; and between the livelong combatants, little men ran to and fro, peering out to sea.

Presently the third boat ran ashore. Its bellied sail hid everything from us who waited at the water's edge. It was hoisted on a high wave, and cast on land. The sea did not want it then. The sea spewed it up. The sea can afford to wait, even until the clean bright little town is a ruin on a salt marsh.

Returning in house, we made hot tea, and laughed.

We had, as it were, saidGood-Nightto the town, though it was only half-past three in the afternoon. Most lazy we must have looked as we sailed off to the fishing ground with a light fair wind, NNW. John's young muscular frame was leaning against the mainmast, like a magnificent statue dressed for the moment in fishermen's rig. Tony aft was lounging across the tiller. He fits the tiller, for he is older and bent and his eyes are deeply crowsfooted with watching. Both of them showed the same splendid contrast of navy-blue jerseys against sea eyes and spray-stung red and russet skins. I was lying full length along the midship thwart. We lopped along lazily, about three knots to the hour.

HERRING DRIFTING

As we lounged and smoked, each of us sang a different song, more or less in tune. It sounded not unmelodious upon the large waters. At intervals we asked one another where the 'gert bodies of herrings' had gone off to. Eastwards, westwards, to the offing, or down to the bottom to spawn?

So near the land we were, yet so far from it in feeling. There, to the NE. was the little town, sunlit and brilliantly white, with the church tower rising in the middle and the heather-topped cloud-capped hills behind. There around the bay, were the red cliffs, crossed by deep shadows and splotched with dark green bushes. The land was there. We were to sea. The water, which barely gurgled beneath the bows of the drifter, was rushing up the beaches under the cliffs with a myriad-sounding rattle. Gulls, bright pearly white or black as cormorants, according as the light struck them, were our only companions. The little craft our kingdom was—twenty-two foot long by eight in the beam,—and a pretty pickle of a kingdom!

Mixed up together in the stern were spare cork buoys, rope ends, sacks of ballast and Tony. Midships were the piled up nets and buoys. For'ard were more ballast bags and rope ends, some cordage, old clothes, sacks, paper bags of supper, four bottles of cold tea, two of paraffin oil and one of water, the riding lamp and a very old fish-box, half full of pebbles, for cooking on. All over the boat were herring scales and smelly blobs of roe. It's sometime now since the old craft was scraped and painted.

But the golden light of the sunset gilded everything, and the probable catch was what concerned us.

We chose our berth among the other drifters that were on the ground. We shot two hundred and forty fathom of net with a swishing plash of the yarn and a smack-smack-splutter of the buoys. We had our supper of sandwiches and tatie-cake and hotted-up tea.

"Can 'ee smell ort?" asked John sniffing out over the bows.

"Herring!" said I. "I can smell 'em plainly."

"Then there's fish about."

Tony however remarked the absence of birds, and declared that the water didn't look so fishy as when they had their last big haul. "They herrings be gone east," he repeated.

"G'out! What did 'ee come west for then? I told yu to du as yu was minded, an' yu did, didn' 'ee? Us'll haul up in a couple o' hours an' see w'er us got any."

We didn't turn in. We piled on clothes and stayed drinking, smoking, chatting, singing—a boat-full of life swinging gently to the nets in an immense dark silence, an immense sea-whisper.

HAULING IN THE NETS

About nine o'clock we hauled in for not more than nine dozen of fish. The sea-fire glimmered on the rising net, glittered in the boat, and then, with an almost painful suddenness, snuffed out. "They be so full as eggs," said John every minute or two, holding out fish to Tony, who felt them and answered, "Iss, they'm no scanters [spawned or undersized fish].Theybain't here alone."

Nets inboard, we rowed a little east of another boat, to shoot a second time. John said, "Hoist the sail, can't 'ee." Tony said, "What's the need?"

Before eleven we were foul of the other boat's nets and had again to haul in. Tony puffed and panted with the double weight; John disentangled the mesh and swore.

"If we'd a-hoisted the sail..." he grumbled.

"There wasn't no need if we'd a-pulled a bit farther."

"What's the good o' pulling yer arms out?"

"I knowed where to go, on'y yu said we was far enough."

"No I didn't!"

"S'thee think I don' know where to shute a fleet o' nets?"

"Well, we'm foul, anyhow."

"I was herring drifting afore yu was born. I knows well enough."

"Why don' 'ee hae yer own way then, if yu knows. Yu'm s'posed to be skipper here."

"If I'd had me own way...."

"Hould thy bloody row, casn'!"

It sounded like murder gathering up; but Tony calls it their brotherly love-talk, and they are no worse friends for it all. The better the catch, the more exciting the work, and the livelier the love-talk. They say, therefore, that it brings luck to a boat.

A third time we shot nets, safely to the east of every other craft. Then John with his legs in a sack and a fearnought jacket round him, snored in the cutty, whilst Tony nodded sleepily outside. The sky eastwards had already in it the weird whitish light of the coming moon. The risen wind was piping out from land. I could see the bobbing lights of the other drifters to westward, and the glint of the Seacombe lamps on the water. Every now and then a broken wave came up to the boat with a confidential hiss. I had a constant impression that out of the dark flood some great voice was going to speak to me—speak quite softly.

"Shall us hot some more tea?" said Tony. "My feet be dead wi' cold."

We took the old fish-box and placed on the pebbles in it an old saucepan half full of oakum soaked in paraffin. Across the saucepan we ledged a sooty swivel, and on the swivel a black tin kettle which leaked slowly into the flame. Tony and myself lay with our four feet cocked along the edge of the box for warmth. The smoke stank in our nostrils, but the flame was cheery. By that flickering light the boat looked a great deep place, full of lumber and the blackest shadows. The herring scales glittered and the worn-out varnish was like rich brown velvet. And how good the tea, though it tasted of nothing but sugar, smoke, paraffin and herring.

A LONG NIGHT AT SEA

It was nearly midnight. Tony suggested forty winks.

John was still sprawling beneath the cutty. Tony and I snoozed under the mainsail, huddled up together for the sake of warmth, like animals in a nest. At intervals we got up to peep over the gunwale or to bale the boat out. Then with comic sighs we coiled down together again. It was bitterly cold in the small hours. We pooled our vitality, as it were, and shared and shared alike. When we finally awoke, about five in the morning, the wind had died down, the sky and moon were clouded, and a dull mist was creeping over the sea.

We hauled in the net—fathoms of it for scarcely a fish.

"Have 'ee got anything to eat?" asked Tony.

"No."

"Have yu got ort to drink?" asked John.

"No."

"Got a cigarette?" I asked.

"Not one."

"If we was to go a bit farther out and shute...." said Tony.

"G'out! Hould yer row!"

"All very well for yu. Yu been sleeping there for all the world like a gert duncow [dog-fish]. Why didn' 'ee wake up an' hae a yarn for to keep things merry like?"

NORT' AT ALL

John was leaning out over the bows. He rose up; stretched himself. "Shute again!" he said with scorn. "Us an't got nort to eat, nort to drink, nort to smoke, nor nort to talk about, an' us an't catched nort. Gimme thic sweep there, an' let's get in out o' it, I say."

It was foggy. I steered the boat by compass over a sea that, under the smudged moon, was in colour and curve like pale violently shaken liquid mud. In time we glimpsed the cliffs with the mist creeping up over them. Day was beginning to break, and with a breath of wind that had sprung up from the SE., we glided like a phantom ship on a phantom sea towards a phantom town between whose blind houses the wisps of the fog writhed tortuously.

Sixteen hours to sea in an open boat—for three hundred herrings—and the price three shillings a hundred!

It is nothing to fishermen, that; but we were all glad of our breakfast, a smoke and our beds.

Tony was gone to sea on Christmas Eve. (They caught three thousand). Mrs Widger had cricked her back, or had caught cold in it standing at the back door with the steaming wash-tub in front of her and a northerly wind behind. We wanted some supper beer....

I felt more than a little shy on entering the jug and bottle department with a jug. It is such a secret place. To face a bar full of people and plump a jug down on the counter, is one thing; but it is quite another to slink up the stairs and into the wooden box—about seven feet high and four by four—that does duty for the jug and bottle department, and the privy tippling place, of the Alexandra Hotel. There is no gas there. Light filters in from elsewhere. It holds about five people, jammed close together. Round it runs a shelf for glasses, and at one end is a tiny door through which jugs are passed to the barman. Once there was a curtain across the entrance, but it was put to such good and frequent use that they removed it. Talk in the jug and bottle box is usually carried on in soft whispers punctuated by laughter.

Three cloaked old women were there and one young one. Their jugs stood on the shelf, ready to take home, but meanwhile they were having a round of drinks on their own account. They looked surprised at my arrival (it was an intrusion); and more surprised still when, on hearing that the barman was merely having a chat the other side, I rattled the jug on the shelf and bumped the little door. They gasped when I slipped the bolt of the little door with a penknife. What chake to be sure! The hotel shows respect to its light-o'-day customers, but the dim jug and bottle box is supposed to show respect to the hotel. It calls the barmanSir. It said, "Good-night, sir!" in astonished chorus to me.

But just as the mere act of jumping a skipping rope made me long ago a freeman among the children, so I notice that fetching the supper beer has resulted in another indefinable promotion. I am not so much now 'thic ther gen'leman tu Tony Widger's.' I am become 'Mister So-and-so'—myself alone.

When I returned with the jug Jimmy was seated at the table and saying between tears, "I want some supper, Mam. I be 'ungry."

"Yu daring rascal! Yu'll catch your death o' cold if yu goes on getting your feet wet like this, night after night. I'll break every bone in your body, I will! Take off they beuts to once, an' go on up over. An't got no supper for the likes o' you. Yu shan't wear your best clothes to-morrow, n'eet at all, spoiling 'em like this, yu dirty little cat! I'll beat it out o' 'ee. Now then! Up over!"

Very tearful, very hungry, and very slowly, Jimmy went to bed.

"No supper's the thing for the likes o' he," his mother remarked. "I shall gie it to him one o' these days, but I don't hold wi' knocking 'em about tu much."

Her impatience in speech and patience in action are alike extraordinary. She says she will half kill the children and seldom strikes even: if I had the responsibility of them, I fear I should do both.

SUNDAY CLOTHES

Next morning there was a fine dispute over the Sunday clothes. Both Jimmy and Tommy went upstairs defiantly, and routed them out. The kitchen was filled with cries and jeers and threats. Tommy appealed to me. I told him I knew nothing about it, because I hadn't got any Sunday clothes myself.

"Iss, yu 'ave," said Tommy.

"No, not a rag."

"Yu 'ave."

"I haven't. I've none at all. You've never seen them."

"G'out!"

"That's right."

"Well," said Tommy confidentially, "Yu got a clean chimie-shirt then, an't 'ee?"

In the laughter which followed, the Sunday clothes were slipped on. And while Jimmy was struggling with a new pair of boots, he paid me the nicest compliment I have ever heard. He looked up, red but thoughtful. "Yu'm like Father Christmas," he said.

"Why for, Jimmy?"

"'Cause yu'm kind."

Jimmy doesn't know how kind he is to me. And I don't suppose it would do him any good to tell him.

We had a very typical and enjoyable English Christmas. We over-ate ourselves, and were well pleased, and the children went to bed crying.

THE "SHOOTING STAR" FITS OUT

"Shuteing Star o' Seacombe!'Tisa purty crew to go herring driftin'! I'd so soon fall overboard in a gale o' wind as go out to say wi' thic li'l Roosian like that ther. Lord! did 'ee ever see the like o'it? I never did. But there, what can 'ee 'spect when the herring be up in price an' men an' boats as hasn' been to sea for years fits out for to go herring driftin'? Coo'h! driftin'!"

That was Uncle Jake's opinion. He stood on the shingle with his old curiosity of a hat cocked on one side and his hands deep in his trouser pockets, turning himself round inside his clothes to rub warmth into his skin; talking, always talking, whilst his twinkling eyes watch sea and land; but ready to help a boat shove off, and willing to take as pay the opportunity of talking to, and at, its crew. "'Tis blowing a fresh wind out 'long there, I tell 'ee," was his formula of encouragement for a starting boat.

Herrings were up! Sixteen shillings a thousand they had been before Christmas; then eighteen, twenty-three, thirty-one.... "They'm fetching two poun' a thousand tu Plymouth, what there is, an' buyers there waiting from all over the kingdom. An' they'm still going up, 'cause there ain't none. Nine bob a hunderd tu St Ives, I've a-heard say. There's a Plymouth buyer here to-day. I've a-see'd our Seacombe buyers luke. They Plymouth men be the bwoys!"

Herrings too have been in our bay as they have not come for years—'gert bodies of 'em'—while a succession of gales and blizzards has been sweeping the whole of the rest of the British coasts, and driving the steam-drifters into harbour. Hence the price of fish: quotations very high; business nil, or next door to it. Our bay however, by a fortunate freak of the weather, has been amply calm for our little undecked drifters, though squalls off land have made sailing tricky in the extreme. We have seen the snow on the distant hills but none has fallen here. We have had the ground-swell, rolling in from outside, but of broken seas, not one.

The boats that came in early on Christmas night (they didn't like the look of the weather) brought hauls of ten thousand or so. They had given away netfuls of herring to craft from other places, because they had caught so many, and the wind was against them and the sky wild.

Next night, much the same thing. It was rumoured that some Cornish craft were beating up to the bay.

Next day, the Little Russian, a small, snug, ragged, much-bearded man, was to be seen painting the stern of his old boat—a craft more tattered and torn, if possible, than her owner.

"What be doing, Harry?"

No reply. Great industry with the paint-brush.

"Be going to sea then?"

"Iss intye! What did 'er think?"

The Little Russian went on doggedly with his work, and when he rose from his knees, there appeared complete, on the stern of his boat, in lanky, crooked white letters:Shooting Star of Seacombe.

"Be it true yu'm going to sea t'night, Harry?"

"Iss."

"What do 'ee 'spect to catch? Eh?"

No answer again. The Little Russian was hauling a couple of nets aboard.

"Who be going with 'ee?"

"Ol' Joe Barker an' 'Gustus Theodore."

"Good Lord! 'Tisa crew, that! Be 'ee going to catch dree dozen or ten thousand?"

"We'm on'y taking two nets," replied the Little Russian quite seriously.

He was very busy.

AND SHOVES OFF

About three in the afternoon, when the drifters put out to sea, the nor'west wind was springing out from land in squalls. It had not sea-space to raise big waves, but it blew the white tops off the wavelets which hurried out against, and on the top of, the sou'westerly swell that was heaving its way in. As Uncle Jake remarked: "'Tis blowing fresh, I can tell 'ee, an' not so very far out at that. An' 'tis blowing half a gale from the sou'west outside in the Channel. Do 'ee see thic black line across the horizon? That's the sou'west wind, an' plenty o'it. Luke at thees yer run along the shore, wi' a calm sea. 'Tis the sou'west outside as makes that tu."

The boats hoisted their smaller mainsails. "Aye, an' they'll hae to reef they down afore they gets out far. There! did 'ee see thic? That's thiccy seine-boat as fitted out. Seine-boats ain't no fit craft for herring driftin'."

The mainmast of the seine boat had toppled over to port. No sooner was it re-stepped, and the sail hoisted, than over it went again. "Step o' the mast gone, I'll be bound," said Uncle Jake. "They'm going to capsize, going on like that, if they bain't careful. Poor job! when mastises goes over like that. Better to row.... There's thic Li'l Roosian shoving off!"

In fact, theShooting Starwas shoved off, but a wave threw her back upon the shore. She was again shoved off. Again she grounded on the sand, and there she stuck. A roar of laughter broke forth all along the beach. The Little Russian and his crew stood up in the heeled-over boat, and by using their oars like punt poles, they tried to prevent the seas from slewing them round broadside on. Very helpless they looked, very comic, very futile.

A swarm of small boys buzzed around and jeered. The Little Russian jumped up and down with vexation. Augustus Theodore, rowing frantically in a foot or so of water, splashed and 'caught crabs.' Joe Barker, tall, patriarchal, thin and thinly clad, stood up to his oar, looked savage curses from his sunken old eyes and muttered them into his beard.

AND GETS OFF

"Thatbea purty crew!" repeated Uncle Jake. "I 'ouldn' go to say wi' 'em, not if.... A purty fellow, thic 'Gustus Theodore! They calls chil'ern by names nowadays, but they called he 'Gustus Theodore, an' us can't get over thic, so us al'ays calls 'en 'Gustus Theodore in long. Bain't no gude tu hisself nor nobody else. I've a-took 'en to say.... Never again! 'Er ain't no fisherman nuther. An' thic Joe Barker's past it. He've had his day. Been in the Army an' been in the Navy, an' an't brought no pension out o' the one n'eet out o' t'other. Helped throw a 'Merican midshipman overboard once, so they say, drough a porthole. Thought they was going to be hanged for it, but they wasn't. He've a-lived wildish in his time, I can tell 'ee; an' now he's the man for sleep. Take 'en out shrimping or lifting crab-pots, stop rowing a minute an' he's fast asleep. The Li'l Roosian hisself an't been to say thees dozen years. 'Tis a crew o'it! Luke!theycan't shove off. I can see they wants Uncle Jake there."

TheShooting Starwas still being shoved. The Little Russian was still jumping up and down in the stern-sheets; Augustus Theodore was still rowing fast and fruitlessly; and Joe Barker stood impassively tall—a mummy of a man, wrapped up in aged clothes and a great dirty white beard. Life was contracted within him. No more than his eyes seemed alive, and hardly those until you looked closely; for the yellow rims and whites appeared to be dead, and the old cursing flame of life burnt only in the pupils.

"Do 'ee really mean to go?" asked Uncle Jake, taking up a long oar to shove with. "'Tisn't nowise fit for a crazy craft like thees yer."

"When a man," said the Little Russian solemnly, "when a man has a chance to catch herring and pay his way, and pay a debt or two maybe, 'tis on'y right to try."

"For sure 'tis. But why an't 'ee been to say thees twelve year then?"

"An't been fit...."

"Fit! Tis the price o' herring fetches the likes o' yu. Have 'ee got yer lead-line and compass aboard?"

"I've broke mine."

"'Tis tempting Providence to go away wi'out 'em Be yu off? Off yu goes then. Luke out!"

A yell went up as a wave broke in over the stern and soaked Joe Barker's back.

"They'm off!" cried Uncle Jave with ironic merriment. "Wet drough to the skin they be!"

The Little Russian rowed steadily on the same side as 'Gustus Theodore. Both of them just balanced Joe Barker, who rowed on the other side in strong jerks, as if his aged strength revived for a part only of each stroke.

Darkness, drawing in over the sea, hid the drifters from sight. Along the beach we asked one another in jest, "I wonder what theShuteing Staris doing now?"

The commonest answer was a laugh. But we did want to know.

Between eleven o'clock and midnight sail after sail appeared silently on the black darkness, as if some invisible hand had suddenly painted them there. The boats were coming in. Creaks and groans of winches sounded along the beach.

AND RETURNS

"Who be yu?" was the greeting from a rabble of youths who scuttled up and down the waters' edge to guide boats to their berths and gain first news of the catches. "Have 'ee see'd ort o' theShuteing Star?" they shouted.

"No-o-o-o!"

"Ishan't go to bed till they comes in," said Uncle Jake. "Cuden' sleep if I did. 'Tisa craft! Her's so leaky as a sieve, lying dry all these years. Not but what her was a gude 'nuff li'l craft in her time—tu small for winter work. But I wishes 'em luck, I du."

At last, theShooting Stardid row in. They had not dared to sail her. She touched the beach before we glimpsed her, for all our watching. A crowd ran down to haul her up and to crack jokes on her.

"Have 'ee catched ort, Harry?"

"Tu or dree dizzen, an' half a ton o' coral an' some wild-crabs."

"Did 'er sail well—keep up to the wind? Eh?"

"Us rowed. 'Tis blowin' a gale out there."

"What yu done to your nets?"

"Broke 'em."

"On to the bottom?"

"Iss."

"Why didn't 'ee go crab-fishing proper? Be 'ee going again?"

The little Russan saw no joke. He bustled about the boat and replied: "A-course we be, if 'tis fit."

"Well, I wishes 'ee luck then."

We all wished luck to theShooting Star—to that cranky old boatload of pluck, ill-luck, and ancient desperation.

Said Uncle Jake: "I'd rather see they come in wi' a boatload o' herring than any boat along the beach. 'Tis a purty craft an' a purty crew, but they du desarve it."

So said we all. 'Twas the least payment we could make for our entertainment.

As soon as they were hauled up, Joe Barker lit his pipe, and, instead of going to bed, he went west along the shore, and carried up and sifted sand till dawn.

"Jest what he be fit for now," Uncle Jake remarked. "That'll get 'en his bread an' baccy far sooner'n drifting for herring in thicShuteing Star."

But if we only could have looked into theShooting Starat sea. TheShooting Star of Seacombe!

"Us got 'em at last then!" so we tell one another. We have caught the catch of the season.

For three or four days the hauls had been fairly good. Elsewhere on the coast, the snow, sleet, wind and wrecks continued. Here alone, in Seacombe Bay, it got colder and colder, and the sea became calmer and sunnier. "Tis like old days," Uncle Jake said while he spliced a new cut-rope to the drifter. "The herring be come again, in bodies, and the price be up. Us'll hae 'em."

PAYING CALLS AT SEA

An hour before sunset on Saturday afternoon we were shoved off the beach—Tony, John, and myself. Every article of underclothing in duplicate, a couple of guernseys and a coat or two were next to nakedness. We were bloated with clothes, but that northerly air, it seemed to be fingering our very skins. Yet there was hardly wind enough to fill the sail. Ricketty-rock, ricketty-rock, went the sweeps between the thole-pins, as we rowed to the fishing ground six miles or so away. Not one of us wished to shirk the heavy work. 'Twas indeed our only source of warmth. The sun was setting. The moon began to rise. The sea was all of a glimmer and glitter.

"I should think we was nearly where they fish be," said John.

"Bit farther," said Tony. "Us'll drift back 'long when the flid tide makes."

"Du as yu'm minded tu."

"Steer her a little bit in," directed Tony.

"A little bit out," directed John the next minute.

It was a middle course that turned out so happily.

We shot our nets—seven forty-fathom nets we had aboard—between the dying sunlight and the rising moon. Very still was the sea, and quiet, except where the other drifters were shooting their nets. Their talk lingered on the water; small voices that yet sounded strong. By the light of the moon I counted twenty-seven drifters, some of them great harbour craft from Cornwall, carrying fifteen or more nets. It seemed as if not a herring on that little fishing ground could escape the long fleets of nets.

We lighted the paraffin flare; supped on sandwiches and oily tea. We stamped about the stern-sheets to try and warm our feet. We sat awhile beneath the cutty. We thought we smelt fish, but it might have been only the smoke from our oil fire and the herring roe plastered about the boat. Despairing of sleep in such a cold, we sang and smoked.

Presently a plash of oars. Little punts were detaching themselves from the larger drifters and flitting about on the sea like slow-winged moon-butterflies. One came alongside.

"Whu's that there?"

"Tony an' John Widger—Have 'em been catching much to Hallsands?—Be they Plymouth drifters up t'night?—What price yu been making?—How deep yu got yer nets?—Have 'ee catched holt the bottom?—How's Aaron an' Charles?—Did he get back ort o' his gear?—Us an't done a gert deal eet. Few thousands thees week. Be yu going to haul in soon?—Better, be her? Thought her was dead by now...."

HAULING IN

The fish-gossip over, we knew all the news of our stretch of coast. After taking another cigarette and another pull at our 'drop o' summut short,' the man in the punt rowed off to his drifter.

"D' yu know your fourth buoy's awash?" he shouted back.

"Is it, by God!" said John.

"I can see 'tis," said Tony.

"G'out! why didn' 'ee see 'twas afore then? Let's go an' luke."

We buoyed the end of the road and started rowing alongside the net-buoys. The fourth was bobbing up and down. The fifth appeared now and then. None of the others was visible.

"Damn'd if us bain't going to see some sport!" shouted John as we hastened back to take up the road.

We tugged on oilskins and then waited watchfully—for the inside net to fill as well. The third buoy disappeared. The second went awash. "Now 'tis time, ain't it?"

"Iss, I reckon."

We bent to it, and began to haul.

The road come in heavy: John hauled and Tony coiled. As the net rose we saw a shimmer in the water, not of sea-fire—it was too cold—but of silver-sided herring. Then John took the foot of the net, Tony the mesh and myself the headrope. One strain. Altogether! Net and fish came in over the gunwale.

"No use to try and pick 'em out yer!" said John.

"Us 'ould never ha' got 'em in wi' two," panted Tony.

"Haul, casn'! Trim the boat. We'm going to hae all us can carry if t'other nets be so full as thees yer."

We hauled, and pulled, and puffed and swore. The fish came over the side like a band of jewels, like shining grains on a huge and never-ending ear of corn, like a bright steel mat.... It was as if the moonlight itself, that flooded air and water, was solidifying into fish in the dimmer depths of the sea. A good catch must have dropped back out of the net. At times, it seemed as if nothing could move the headrope. I jammed a knee against the gunwale, waited till the dipping of the boat gave me a foot or two of line, then jammed again to hold it. The sea-birds screeched at their feast.

Tony, an inflated mannikin, danced on the piled-up nets and fish. "Help, help!" he cried to the next drifter. "Us got a catch."

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