From Ploughshare to Pulpit by Gordon Stables

Week after week the herring-fishery went by, and certainly John Menzies had no reason to complain of his want of success. Never a day passed that he did not send his hauls in barrels to the Southern market, and in all the fleet, this season, not a casualty had occurred as yet of a fatal character.

Once a shoal of porpoises had appeared in the bay, but by shouting, and the throwing of stones, the fishermen had succeeded in heading them away, and so the nets had been saved.

Sandie had not only settled down to his new life, but had become quite enamoured of it.

The sea was not always calm, however. Our hero told himself that he liked it best in its wayward moods. But there was more than one night when the wind blew so high, and the waves raged with such violence, that it would have been madness to have ventured out. Again, sometimes after they had launched and sailed away, under the most favouring auspices, shortly after midnight a gale would suddenly arise. Then would they have to draw in their nets as speedily as possible, and make at once for the distant harbour, feeling happy and lucky to get inside.

Sandie had a letter from Willie about every second day, and very cheerful epistles they were, just like Willie himself.

But these letters helped greatly to keep up Sandie's spirits.

Then he had his mathematical books. Oh, yes, he had plenty of time to study, and good use he made of it too.

It seemed to him, moreover, that instead of hard manual labour injuring his constitution, he was waxing stronger every day. His limbs were as stiff as gate-posts, his biceps was as hard as the mainstay of an Aberdeen clipper. He found himself singing, too, at all odd times, and somehow the songs he sang always bore some relation to his present calling; as, for example --

THE BOATIE ROWS.

Oh, weel may the boatie row / That fills a heavy creel, / An' clothes us a' frae top to toe, / An' buys our porridge-meal. / The boatie rows, the boatie rows, / The boatie rows indeed, / An' happy be the lot o' a' / That wish the boatie speed.

Or that other tuneful fisher's song called --

CALLER HERRIN'.

Wha'll buy our caller herrin'? / They're bonnie fish and halesome fairin'; / Wha'll buy our caller herrin', / Just new come frae the Forth?

When you're sleepin' on your pillows, / Dream ye aught of our poor fellows, / Darkling, as they face the billows, / A' to fill their woven willows. / Buy, buy, &c.

It was on the Monday evening preceding what was long known in the little village of Blackhive as Black Tuesday, and the fishing was well-nigh at its close. Some boats indeed had been taken off the stations, and had borne up for the South. They would fish for a week or two perhaps near the Forth, then sail still farther south to the shores of Norfolk, making Yarmouth itself their headquarters.

Storms are not unfrequent on the shores of England at this time of year, and it is the marvel of the Southern fishermen how those hardy denizens of far northern latitudes can dare all the dangers of the deep in their open boats, which, by the way, in build, and probably also in rig, are not unlike the warships of the Vikings of old. It would really seem that in some instances those fishermen are the lineal descendants of the fearless Norsemen, who were, probably, the first to wage real warfare on the bosom of the mighty ocean.

But on this particular Monday evening, John Menzies was just as merry as ever Sandie had seen him.

"The Lord," he said, "liked a merry heart when it was sinless, and the Lord had been very good to him, and had blessed him in his basket and in his store, in his murlin and in his creel."

To-night he had no less than half-a-dozen towsy polls and bright round faces to play to, for there would be no expedition to sea this evening.

The wind blew half a gale, and the breakers roared and fumed and foamed upon the beach, houses high, certainly as high as John's little cottage, for ever and anon the green seas broke over the chimney, and, as the little fisherman expressed it, tirled the thatch.