A night alone on the broad Atlantic in an open dory seems to have no
terrors for them. Each year adds its lists of casualties to those that
have gone before. Fogs have shut in, seas have risen, and morning has
dawned again and again with no sign of the missing men. Sometimes an
upturned dory is found, with her name--the “Molly S.,” or the “Betty T.,”
in honor of the owner’s shore-mate--on her pointed bow, but only the gray
ocean can tell the story of the missing men.
When the “Polly’s” day’s luck is run, all hands take stations for dressing
down. It is the dirty part of the business; but so quickly is it done that
the crew seems part of a mechanism, working like clockwork. Two men stand
at the gurry-pen, their long knives gleaming red in the sunset. The fish
is slit from throat to tail with one cut, and again on both sides of the
neck. It then passes to the next man, who with a scoop of his hand drops
the cod’s liver in a basket and sends the head and offal flying. The fish
slides across the dressing-table, where the backbone is torn out by the
third man, who throws it, finally, headless, cleaned, and open, into the
washing-tub.
The moment the tub is filled, the fish are pitched down the open hatch to
the fifth man, who packs them with salt snugly in the bins. So quickly
is the work done that the fish seem to travel from one hand to another
as though they were alive, and a large gurry-pen is emptied and the bin
packed and salted in less than an hour.