to the stern for display. The skate goes
first, then the haddock, ling, and whatever
else they may have. Sometimes they have
a preponderance of what is locally known
as "coal-fish," an inferior kind of cod, or
hake, worth only threepence each. On the
wharf expectant stand the buyers, as each
coble comes up in its turn. The fishermen
and the buyers are old acquaintances.

"Well, Jack, what have got?" cries out
one of the latter.

"Score and half cod, three score skate,
four score haddock, ling, halibut," &c.,
replies Jack.

"What's t'price?" inquires the buyer.

"Two pound," says Jack, promptly.
The answer is received in silence so
prolonged, that Jack at last calls out, "Is none
of you goin' to bid?"

"I'll gie a pound," says another of the
buyers, who in the interval has been trying
to take stock of the fish.

"Pound's boten!"  roars Jack.

"'Nother shillin',"  calls another buyer,
and so on, bidders rising their price, and,
if need be, Jack dropping his until a
satisfactory bargain is come to. Then Jack
hangs up an instrument which is called a
klep-book by the side of his craft, to denote
that his stock is sold;  the buyer enters the
name of the boat and its owner, and the
price of his purchase, in his book, though
he does not pay until Saturday, and Jack
pushes off to land his fish lower down the
wharf, and to make way for the next
comer. The fish thus purchased is sent off
at once to Billingsgate, the cod packed
four or five together in boxes, the rest just
thrown into baskets, the vendors asking no
special price for it, and being actually
ignorant of what is accredited to them until
the time of settlement with the London
consignee comes round.

The herring fishery is a very much larger
affair. Engaged in it at Whitby, and at
Staithes (a large fishing-village on the far
side of Runswick Bay, the boats of which
are marked with the W. Y., and are to all
intents and purposes Whitby boats), are
about seventy cobles and "mules " (so
called because they are something between
a coble and a boat), and a few "farmin""
boats, supposed to be a corruption of " five-men
boats."  These last, than which there
are no finer fishing-craft in the world, come
from Robin Hood's Bay, a picturesque
place within six miles of Whitby, with a
village strongly reminding one of those

       Red roofs about a narrow wharf
       In clusters,

where Enoch Arden, Philip Ray, and Annie
Lee passed their childhood, and so
thoroughly maritime a village, that though it
has only about a thousand inhabitants
numbered in the census, more than a
hundred and fifty ships, engaged for the most
part in the coal and Baltic trade, hail from
it. In its graveyard more than two-thirds
of the headstones are incribed  "in
affectionate remembrance" of persons who
have perished in shipwreck, or been other-
wise lost at sea. The Robin Hood's Bay
"farmin' boats" carry seven men and two
lads, and there are always four or five men
in the herring cobles.

Herrings are always caught in the dark,
in shoals, skoals, or schools, as they are
variously called in different parts of the
kingdom. They are taken in large nets,
which in former days used to be made of
hemp or flax, but which are now composed
of cotton, and manufactured by machinery,
by far the largest portion of them coming
from Scotland. Each of the nets used by
the Whitby men is sixty yards in length,
and in the larger boats it is common to
find sixty of these nets, in the smaller
thirty. The "takes" are sometimes very
large. In the early part of the summer
they will range from seven hundred to a
thousand per boat. The herrings are then
sold at from seven to ten shillings a hundred.
As the season progresses the number
increases, and the price commanded
proportionately diminishes. Large boats will
begin to bring in six or seven thousand
herrings as the result of one night's take,
then ten thousand, a round number, which
is known as a "last,"  and which fetches
seven pounds ten shillings. The number
of herrings which come into and go out of
Whitby is almost incredible. In the second
week of last September three hundred tons
of herrings were despatched from the
Whitby station of the North-Eastern Railway.
The fish are sold at the quay-side
by an auctioneer, who is paid by a commission
of eightpence in the pound (under
existing rules the buyers seem to have some
very extraordinary and incomprehensible
advantages), and are bought by wholesale
salesmen and by curers or preparers of
bloaters in London, Liverpool, Manchester,
and even in Yarmouth, whose agents and
travellers attend the arrival of the boats at
the wharf. The herrings are packed in
"kits" or barrels, the former containing
four hundred, the latter from five to six
hundred each. Before being packed they
are frequently "roused," or turned over