the bait. They are on the bite, too, of frosty nights. I puts my sail over my head, and it gets as white as a sheet. I often prays for it not to come daylight, for I never feels cold as long as the fish bites.* “ The night is the best time to catch the congers, sir. The congers is as taffety fish as is; there’s not a deli-eater fish as swims, and they are very nice in their feeding. If a whelk was to get on the bait, the conger

to bide all night;would never touch it,—not if you was they are regular bait-robbers them whelks. But when the congers gets on to the hook they lets you know it, and when you pulls ’em up, they curls their tails and holds a wonderful sight of water; its ten to one if you don’t lose ’em if you have not got strong gear. But you must have nice fresh bait. If there’s a bone in the bait they wont touch it; Master Conger will have the first grab, or none at all. I’ve cut up a dozen pouts, and seen the conger smack at them all, and then he never takes them if they don’t quite suit his taste. The biggest conger as ever I catched was in ‘the

(i.e. Zostera)—at the back of the Gosportgrass’— Hospital. Just as the sun goes down I hooks my gentleman, and says I to the man who was fishing near me, ‘ Joe, I’ve got him this time and no mistake, and a beautiful fish he is.’ He towed me and my

This paragraph started a long discussion in “ The Meld ” relative to the sleep of fishes. I would r*fer to the Appendix for many curious facts and observations on this point.

little boat round my anchor six times, and I got a good strong Dutch line-—so strong that three men could not break it, for we tried it afterwards. Master Conger had got hooked outside of his teeth, still the hook had got a good strong holt, but yet it gave him the chance of chawing the line; and he kept on chawing it a good one, so I played him till at last I got him alongside, and tried to gaff him, and then he flew right at me out of the water. It was a terrible dark night, and I could hardly see, but I hit him a rap over the head with my stump, and then I was obliged to let him run again, or he would have slewed my arm right off, and pulled me out of the boat as well, for I could not slip my cable. At last I got terribly tired, and so did Master Conger, for he let me haul him up alongside; Joe then came up with his boat, and we both whipped our gaffs into him amidships, and jerked him into the boat. When he got aboard I thought he would have knocked my old boat all to pieces, for he was fore and aft in a minute, and sent everything flying. I was only afraid he would get his tail on the gunwale (for congers is terribly strong in the tail) and then he would have hauled himself overboard; so I watched my chance, and hit him a crack just where his life lays, and then he was quiet at last. He was all six foot long and sixteen inches round the thickest part. His great head was like a sheep’s, and his jaws was awful.

I sold over four shillingsworth of him, besides what I ate myself; and all along his backbone was fat, as fine and white as suet. He was a fish, he was!” u Can you swim, George?” “ Swim, sir! I can swim like a fish, but I can't swim as well as a chap as I heard one night in ’Meriker offer to lay a thousand dollars as he would swim a voyage as far as a ship, if he only had a bag of peas for provisions, and an anchor and chain to bring him up

at night.” We were having our lunch, and the line was “ fishing by itself,” when all of a sudden the top began to “ bob, bob.” The gyrations and play of the fish, four fathoms deep in the water, were so extraordinary that we could not make out the nature of the prisoner. Robinson Crusoe, however, at once pronounced that it was a lobster, “ I knows by the bite of him.” At last, up came the lobster to the surface, flapping his tail fn^iously and pulling backwards like a dog at a bit of carrion; but we played him judiciously, tired him out, and at last we got him close to the boat. “ Don’t go to gaff him, Mr. Buckland; his shell is like glass, and you will lose him: 7’ZZ have him,” said Robinson Crusoe. So, watching his opportunity, he caught the lobster by the tail and whipped it into the boat in an instant. “ That’s a beautiful fish, sir, and it’s a 1 berried hen;’ look at the spawn under her tail, sir. Mind your toes, boy, or she’ll

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have one on ’em off in a nip. She is as spiteful as a mad dog now she’s got catched, and if you torment her she is sure to shoot her claws, and that will spile her for boiling. Look how she’s turning her great long horns fore and aft; and look here, sir, she’s nipped this pout right in two with her pincers. ’Tis not often you catches a berried hen like this, and she’s worth all two shillings. fast, gentlemen: here comes theLook out, sir—sit swell from that great lump of a packet as she is rounding the Spit buoy; that’s the boat I saved when I was a-fishing off Lumps Bay, and now she wants to capsize us. She’s bound to London now from the westward.” “ Are there many lobsters about here, Robinson Crusoe?” said I. “ Why, no, sir, there ain’t; but there would be plenty of ’em if it was not for the congers; they eats ’em when they slips their shell and they are quite soft. When it’s loose they goes stern foremost agin the rock, and beats it off their backs; but a crab he’ll crawl out of his shell, lie will. A soft lobster is as good again as a hard one for eating, but the gentlefolks don’t like ’em; they will only buy ’em when their shells is hard. When you puts lobsters in hot water they cries like a child. I once catched a terrible big lobster, he was 12 lb. full I felt him crawling away with the hook, so I jerks it, and I pulled him right up to the surface of the water,

and when he seed me he begun a fluttering, and give a j erk and pulled the hook quite straight, and sunk like a stone to the bottom.” “ Did the hook kill him, George?” “ He die! Lor bless you, sir, he never died! He hurt me a precious sight more than I hurt him, for I was terrible put out at losing him; he’d have fetched me four shilling if I had catched him. Another time my pout-hook got foul of something, so I hauls it up, and what should it be but a boatswain’s bucket, and sitting in it was Master Lobster, about 61b. weight. He could not open hisself a bit, because he was jammed into the bucket, and did not know the way to get out. u Lobsters ain’t dangerous things like crabs. There wras a man killed by a crab some years ago at the back of the Isle of Wight. He was down among the rocks at low tide, and he seed what they calls ‘ a pound crab’ goin’ into a hole in a rock. He had not got a gaff, or a crooked nail on a stick, with him, to fetch him out, so, foolish-like, he puts his hand in to him, and the crab felt his hand, and ‘ scrumpled ’ up all his legs together, and jammed the man’s hand into the hole in the rock. The poor fellow halloaed and halloaed, but there was nobody nigh to help him. He could not break the crab’s shell with his fingers, and the crab kept his legs scrumpled up at the hole; so the tide come up, and the poor man was drownded. When the tide went down

crusoe’s yarn. 25

they found him quite dead, with his hand still in the hole along with the crab.” u I suppose you have seen some fun when you were on foreign service, George. Now, come, spin us a

yarn, for the pouts do not bite very freely.” “ Well, sir, if you and the gentleman alongside of you wants a yarn, here goes. u I recollects one night when we was off- in the Mediterranean, we wTas going on to the ship with a officer, and we seed a young chap under a winder, and he was making the awfullest noises and faces as ever you heard or see, for all the world like a great jackass a braying; and then he stopped his noises, and puts his arm out like a windmill, and goes round like a weathercock. 4 Well,’ says I to myself, ‘ if that’s quality courting, it’s a rum game.’ So by-and-by a young lady comes to the winder, so he catches holt of this ere young lady, collars, and runs off with her; so when we see this we run after him and the lady as he had got in his arms; and when we catched him, the officer gives him the pint of his cutlash, and says, 4 You’d better drop her, young chap, or I heave you over the cliff! so he drops her, there and then, and the officer says, 4 Now you’d better cut and run, my dear; there ain’t British officers always about under your windows when these ere foreign varmints is up to their larks.’ But I thinks the Officer went up to see the lady next day, for all that, to ax her

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if she catched cold. It is these ere foreign ladies as spiles themselves with paint, putty, and glue; a good slouch with a bucket of nice fresh water would bring it all off; the best paint as a lady can buy spiles her directly she puts it on. I likes to see the ladies come down to the shore in summer with their hair down: they ain’t like the nuns in foreign parts; they gets cropped, and that spoils ’em just as much as paint.” “ But who is coming now George? Some poor old man in a boat, all by himself: why he can hardly get along at all. Who is he?” “ Why, sir, he is old George Brewer, but we calls him 6 Uncle.’ I knowed the old man as long as I knowed myself; he’s no fisherman, because he won’t be told he thinks he knows, but he don’t know; he thinks he knows where the wrack lies, but he generally pulls up sixty yards one side or other of it; he is the oldest pensioner about here; he has received government money these sixty years, that’s all. How are you, Uncle? the gentleman wants to speak to

you.” u Why you are getting on in years, Uncle,” said I “ how old are you?” u I’m eighty-six come next Michaelmas. I was born in 1777.” “ I suppose you can recollect a thing or two we know nothing about, Uncle.”

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