I Had The Curiosity Here, With The
Assistance Of A Merchant Of The Town, To Go Out To The Mouth
Of the
haven in a boat to see the entrance, and castle or fort that
commands it; and coming back
With the tide of flood, I observed
some small fish to skip and play upon the surface of the water,
upon which I asked my friend what fish they were. Immediately one
of the rowers or seamen starts up in the boat, and, throwing his
arms abroad as if he had been bewitched, cries out as loud as he
could bawl, "A school! a school!" The word was taken to the shore
as hastily as it would have been on land if he had cried "Fire!"
And by that time we reached the quays the town was all in a kind of
an uproar.
The matter was that a great shoal--or, as they call it, a "school"-
-of pilchards came swimming with the tide of flood, directly out of
the sea into the harbour. My friend whose boat we were in told me
this was a surprise which he would have been very glad of if he
could but have had a day or two's warning, for he might have taken
200 tons of them. And the like was the case of other merchants in
town; for, in short, nobody was ready for them, except a small
fishing-boat or two--one of which went out into the middle of the
harbour, and at two or three hauls took about forty thousand of
them.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 88 of 126
Words from 24851 to 25115
of 35637
