IX

SEACOMBE,

_December_.

1

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.

[Sidenote: _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 naive 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, _naivete_ was repressed; and I am the

more grateful to these children for taking me in hand--for being able

to do so.

[Sidenote: _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. You _ought_ to leave him--at

once!" Mrs Stidson has a number of young children.

[Sidenote: _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 bad _faux 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

pense_ might very well be _his_ motto.

2

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.

[Sidenote: _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.

3

We had, as it were, said _Good-Night_ to 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.

[Sidenote: _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.

[Sidenote: _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]. _They_ bain'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.

[Sidenote: _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?"

[Sidenote: _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.

4

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 barman _Sir_. 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.

[Sidenote: _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.

5

[Sidenote: _THE "SHOOTING STAR" FITS OUT_]

"_Shuteing Star o' Seacombe!_ '_Tis_ a 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! '_Tis_ a 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.

[Sidenote: _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, the _Shooting Star_ was 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.

[Sidenote: _AND GETS OFF_]

"That _be_ a 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! _they_ can't shove off. I

can see they wants Uncle Jake there."

The _Shooting Star_ was 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 the _Shuteing

Star_ is 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.

[Sidenote: _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' the _Shuteing Star_?" they

shouted.

"No-o-o-o!"

"_I_ shan't go to bed till they comes in," said Uncle Jake. "Cuden'

sleep if I did. '_Tis_ a 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, the _Shooting Star_ did 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 the _Shooting 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 thic _Shuteing

Star_."

But if we only could have looked into the _Shooting Star_ at sea. The

_Shooting Star of Seacombe_!

6

"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."

[Sidenote: _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...."

[Sidenote: _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."

"Hould yer row!"

"Help, help!"

"Shut up, yu fule!--We'm not done yet.--Thee doesn't want to pay for

help, dost?"

[Sidenote: _THE CATCH OF THE SEASON_]

We hauled, pulled, puffed and swore again. Yard by yard the nets came

up, now foul, now broken, now tangled, now wound about the headrope and

almost solid with fish.

"Oh, my poor back."

"Lord, my arms!"

"Casn' thee trim a boat better'n that?"

"Where 'er down tu?"

"There's only two strakes to spare."

The water was within less than a foot of the gunwale, and we were five

or six miles from home.

"Help, help!" shouted Tony again, and this time we let it pass. Five

out of our seven nets were aboard; we could not take the remaining two.

Another drifter came alongside and took in the sixth net.

"Come on! here's the seventh--the last."

"Can't take no more."

"Ther's on'y thees yer outside net. Casn' thee take thic?"

"Can't du it. We'm leaking now. Here's your headrope. Good-night."

Tony gave a gesture of despair. "What shall us du? Us can't take in

much more.

"Hould yer row, an' haul!"

The last net was fuller than ever. We hauled in half of it. A punt came

near. "Can 'ee take one net?" yelled Tony.

"Us got 'en half in now," said John.

"Iss, but the wind's gone round--north-easterly--dead against us. An'

luke at the circle round the mune. Ther's wind in thic sky, I tell 'ee.

Us got so much now as we can carry home on a calm sea, let 'lone

choppy."

We cut the net.

"Hurry up! Hoist sail and get in out o'it 'fore the wind rises. Come

on!"

With two oars out to windward we started beating home. We made a tack

out to sea. There the waves skatted in over the bows, for the

deeply-laden boat was down by the head because the heavy pile of net

and fish prevented the water from running aft where we could have

bailed it out. If we had had to tack much farther to sea.... We should

have lost the catch, and perhaps ourselves.

We put the boat round towards Seacombe. "Luff her up all yu can," said

John. "Luff her up, I tell thee, or we'm never going to fetch. The

sea's rising an' us an't got nort to spare."

By keeping the luff of the sail in a flutter, sometimes too much into

the wind, I just fetched. Then we rowed into smoother water.

"'Tis fifteen thousand if 'tis one," said John.

"'Tis more'n that," said Tony with a note of respect in his voice.

[Sidenote: _PACKING THE FISH_]

"Better wait till they sends some boats out. Us can't baych the boat

wi' thees weight in her."

We yelled, anchored, then waited; swore, yelled and waited. Someone

came at last. The great heavy mast was sent ashore. Two boatloads of

net and fish followed, and finally the drifter herself was beached.

The crowd that had gathered on the shingle worked at the winch and

ropes. We walked about among them answering questions, but for the

moment doing nothing. We felt we had a right to watch the landlubbers

work in return for the herrings we threw out to them. We had been to

sea; had caught the catch of the season.

I came in house and fried some herrings for supper. Tony and John went

back to the boat. All night long they worked under the moon, drawing

out the net and picking the fish from it, standing knee-deep in fish,

spotted with scales like sequins. Far into Sunday they worked, counting

and packing the fish while the Sunday folk in their best clothes

strolled along the sea-wall and sniffed.

Twenty-two long-thousand herrings--squashed, dirty and

bloodstained--were carted away in the barrels. Twenty-eight hours Tony

and John had worked. Then they washed, picked herring scales off

themselves, and rested. The skin was drawn tightly over their faces

and, as it were, away from their eyes. I saw, as I glanced at them,

what they will look like when they are old men: the skull and

crossbones half peeped out. And I said to myself: "When we feed on

herrings we feed on fishermen's strength. Though we don't cook human

meat, we are cannibals yet. We eat each other's lives."

Rightly considered, that's not a nasty thought. Nor a new one either.

7

New Year's Eve last night.... Tony did not go to sea. He announced that

he would turn over a new leaf, and be a gen'leman, and not do no work

no more. "Summut'll turn up," he said when I asked him how he was going

to feed his family. "Al'ays have done an' al'ays will, I s'pose. Thees

yer ol' fule 'll go on till he's clean worked out. Thee casn' die but

once, an' thee casn' help o'it nuther.

"Shut thee chatter an' bring in some wude," said Mrs Widger. "Now then

yu children, off yu goes! Up over, else my hand'll be 'longside o'ee!"

"Gude-night!" say the children in chorus. "Gude-night! Gude-night! See

yu t'morrow morning. Du us hae presents on New Year's Day, Mam?"

"Yu'll see. P'raps a cracker...."

"Coo'h...."

"Up over!"

"What 'tis tu be a family man," said Tony.

"Whu's fault's that?" Mam Widger retorted.

"There, me ol' stocking, don't thee worry a man! Gie us a kiss...."

"G'out!"

[Sidenote: _DREE-HA'P'ORTH_]

The Christmas decorations and the little spangled toys from the

children's crackers were still hanging from clothes-lines across the

kitchen. We piled wood on the fire; it had barnacle shells on it; with

the wreckage of good ships we warmed ourselves. Mam Widger laid the

supper. The steam from the kettles puffed merrily into the room.

Herrings were cooking in the oven. A faint odour--they were being

stewed in vinegar--stole out into the room to give us appetite and for

the moment a sense of plenty. Mrs Widger took a penny-ha'penny from the

household purse and handed it, together with a jug to Tony.

"Dree-ha'p'orth o' ale an' stout. Go on."

Tony returned with tupence-ha'p'orth. He had added a penny out of his

own pocket because he is ashamed to ask for less than a pint. Grannie

Pinn came in at the same time. "I got the t'other pen'orth for me

mither-in-law," said Tony.

"Chake again!" Grannie Pinn cried. "I wants more'n a pen'orth, I du."

Tony slipped off his boots just in time. It was I who had to fetch an

extra dree-ha'p'orth.

We supped with the uproariousness that Grannie Pinn always brings here.

Some other people dropped in to see how we were doing. Not staying to

clear the supper, we sang. The songs, as such, were indifferently good,

but we meant them and enjoyed them. For a while Grannie Pinn contented

herself with humming and nodding to the chorus. She started singing:

swore at us for laughing at her. "I cude sing a song wi' anybody once,"

she said; and therewith she struck up a fine, very Rabelaisian old song

in many verses. She lifted up her face to the ceiling, blushed (I am

sure the Tough Old Stick blushed), and in a high cracked voice that

gradually gathered tone and force, she trolled her verses out. With an

infectious abandonment, we took up the chorus. After all, 'twas a song

of things that happen every day--one of those pieces of folk-humour

which makes life's seriousness bearable by carrying us frankly back to

the animal that is in us, that has been cursed for centuries and still

remains our strength.

Grannie Pinn's song was the event of the evening. Excited by her

efforts to the point of hardly knowing whether to laugh or cry, she

told us we were 'a pack o' gert fules,' and went. The other visitors

followed after.

"Don' know what yu feels like," said Tony when they were all gone. "I

feels more-ish. 'N hour agone I wer fit for bed, now I feels 's if I

cude sing for hours on end...."

[Sidenote: _THE NEW YEAR_]

"May as well welcome in the New Year now 'tis so late as 'tis," said

Mrs Widger, taking from one of her store-places a bottle of green

ginger-wine and another of fearful and wonderful 'Invalid Port' which,

as she remarked, 'ain't so strengthening as the port what gentry has.'

Tony added hot water to his ginger-wine, lay back in the courting

chair, plumped his feet on Mrs Widger's lap, and sang some more of

those sea songs that have such melancholy windy tunes and yet most

curiously stimulate one to action. I think it must be because they echo

that particular sub-emotional desperation which causes men to do their

reckless best--the desperation that the treacherous sea itself

engenders.

At a minute or two before twelve by the clock, the three of us went out

to the back door. When the cats had scuttled away, the narrow walled-in

garden was very still. By the light of the stars, shining like points

in the deep winter heavens, I could see the beansticks, the balks of

wood and the old masts and oars. I could also smell the drain. Tony, in

his stockinged feet, leant on his wife's shoulder while he raised first

one foot from the cold stones, and then the other. We were a little

hushed, with more than expectancy. So we waited; to hear the church

clock strike and to welcome in the New Year.

And we waited until Tony said that his feet were too cold to stay there

any longer. The church clock struck--_ting-tang, ting-tang_--in the

frosty air.... A quarter past! The New Year had been with us all the

while. It was our German-made kitchen clock had stopped.

We laughed aloud because the strain was relaxed; then bolted the door

and began putting away the supper things.

"If anybody wants to make me a New Year's Gift," said Tony, "they can

gie me a thousand a year."

"And then yu'd be done for," I said. "Yu cuden' stand a life o' nort to

du. Nor cude I. We'm both in the same box, Tony. We've both got only

our strength and skill and health, and if that fails, then we'm done.

We'm our own stock-in-trade, and if we fail ourselves, then we've both

got only the workhouse or the road."

"Iss," said Mam Widger, "an' I don' know but what yu'm worse off than

Tony. He _cude_ get somebody to work his boats--for a time. An' I cude

work. But afore yu comes to the workhouse yu jest walk along thees way,

an' if us got ort to eat yu shall hae some o'it."

"Be damn'd if yu shan't!" said Tony. (I was putting away the pepper-pot

at the moment). "Us 'ouldn't never let thee starve, not if us had it

ourselves for to give 'ee."

* * * * *

So there 'tis. I'd wish to do the same for him, that he knows. How much

the spirit of such an offer can mean, only those who have been without

a home can understand fully. This New Year's Day has been happier than

most. Life has made me a New Year's Gift so good that I cannot free

myself from a suspicion of its being too good.

It has given me home.

X