One afternoon, about ten days afterward, they set out as usual.
They had earned more than enough to pay their landlady, the
tailor, and the schoolmaster; and every farthing beyond these
expenses they had spent on the net.
Well, on this afternoon, Duncan and Nicol were pulling away to
one of the small, quiet bays, and Rob was idly looking around
him, when he saw something on the surface of the sea at some
distance off that excited a sudden interest. It was what the
fishermen call "broken water,"--a seething produced by a shoal
of fish.
"Look, look, Neil!" he cried. "It's either mackerel or herring:
shall we try for them?"
The greatest excitement now prevailed on board. The younger
brothers pulled their hardest for that rough patch on the water.
They came nearer and nearer that strange hissing of the water.
They kept rather away from it; and Rob quietly dropped the guy
pole over, paying out the net rapidly, so that it should not be
dragged after the boat.
Then the three lads pulled hard, and in a circle, so that at last
they were sending the bow of the boat straight toward the
floating guy pole. The other guy pole was near the stern of the
boat, the rope made fast to one of the thwarts. In a few minutes
Rob had caught this first guy pole: they were now possessed of
the two ends of the net.
But the water had grown suddenly quiet. Had the fish dived, and
escaped them? There was not the motion of a fin anywhere, and yet
the net seemed heavy to haul.
"Rob," said Neil, almost in a whisper, "we've got them!"
"We haven't got them, but they're in the net. Man, I wonder if
it'll hold out?"
Then it was that the diligent patching and the strong tackle
told; for they had succeeded in inclosing a goodly portion of a
large shoal of mackerel, and the weight seemed more than they
could get into the boat.
But even the strength of the younger lads seemed to grow into the
strength of giants when they saw through the clear water a great
moving mass like quicksilver. And then the wild excitement of
hauling in; the difficulty of it; the danger of the fish
escaping; the warning cries of Rob; the possibility of swamping
the boat, as all the four were straining their utmost at one
side!
When that heaving, sparkling mass of quicksilver at last was
captured, the young lads sat down quite exhausted, wet through,
but happy.
"Man! Rob, what do you think of that?" said Neil, in amazement.
"What do I think?" said Rob. "I think, that, if we could get two
or three more hauls like that, I would soon buy a share in Coll
MacDougall's boat, and go after the herring."