and you should throw down, or do what
will be more effectual, tear up by the root,
all these damaged artichokes and burn them
to ashes on large piles of wood. After that,
I would recommend you to turn into the
field a dozen hungry ducks to eat up the
remaining insects." "Ah, sir," said the man,
"to fill the ditch with water I must hire
three men. As to the tearing up of the plants,
the buying or the borrowing of twelve ducks
—holy Maria, what a notion! No sir, patience
is what we must have; we must have
patience." In the evening, the good peasant
paid a handsome price to the priest and
caused mass to be read against the
caterpillars. A week afterwards, they had spread
over the sound field, and were devouring it
unhindered.

Now I come back to the Matanza, and the
Mandrague, or, as they call it on the southern
coast, Tonnaro.

I suggested to the fishermen with whom I
rowed, that I supposed the watch-boat with
the red flag, out in the bay, to be stationed
over the Mandrague. They said, yes; and
explained that the business was managed
somewhat in this way:—the great net was so
contrived as to present a wide mouth open
towards the sea, into which fishes might swim
unsuspiciously: once in, they would swim
forward, and if they went aside, be guided
forward by the sides of the Mandrague into
a large square chamber of net at the end of
it, called the death chamber, open only on the
side by which the tunnies and the other
fishes, caught, of course, incidentally in the
same way, enter it. Over that part of the
net the watch-boat is stationed, in which a
few fishermen are employed to look down into
the water, from early in the morning until
late at night. They lean forward, protected
against the distractions of the upper daylight
by a dark cloth thrown over the head and
body of each watcher, which hangs down to
the surface of the water; a little oil also,
sprinkled upon the surface, keeps the water
smooth, and further assists in enabling the
men to obtain a clear view down into the
depths of the transparent sea. As soon as
fishes worth a haul are seen to come into the
death chamber, these men pull up a net,
which is so placed as to rise like a sliding
panel, and make the net-work complete on
all sides of the cube, from which the Matanza
(the draught of fish on a large scale) has to
be taken; on all sides except, of course,
the top, which is bounded by the upper air.
A signal is then made by flag to the people
in the village to come out and haul. A white
flag summons only seventeen men, the
smallest number by which the net can be
lifted; a blue flag calls double the number;
and a red flag summons as many as can come;
it denotes a very large draught and calls
all hands to the ropes. We had been
summoned by the red flag, and were all duly
excited.

Every man had a personal interest in the
adventure. Each fisherman would receive in
return for his counter, in addition to hard
money, a share of the intestines, hearts, gills
and necks of the fishes for his own consumption.
The priest would get the belly—the
choice part of a tunny—if the draught were
large, perhaps even a whole fish. "And,"
said a fisherman to me, "Father Benatto,
the owner of the Mandrague this year, is no
niggard, and not particular to the exact
cut of the knife, that we should get no bit
better than our due." We were all, therefore,
pulling with good will towards the
watch-boat.

The tunny, for whom the huge trap had
been set, need not be here described in any
detail. It is an uncouth fish, a little in the
form of a perch, and belonging to the
mackerel tribe. It attains a length of nearly
five feet, and then continues to grow, not in
length, but in thickness, so that as its bulk
increases it becomes more and more unwieldy.
It is a fish of prey, and is itself preyed upon
by sharks and dolphins. The choice parts of
its flesh are greatly prized. For my own part,
I would as gladly eat tough cow meat as the
finest bit of tunny. In the net the tunny
fish behaves like a gentleman, and rarely
conducts himself in an unseemly manner.
"There would be no need of ropes," the head
fisherman told me, "if we caught nothing but
tunny; spiders' web would hold them tight
enough, for when they see resistance to escape
they swim only round and round the net, as
if they must needs go out through a door in
a decorous manner. But there are the sharks.
They are abominably stupid. A shark last
year broke through the meshes, like a burglar
as he was, robbed us of eighteen yards of net,
and dragged away an anchor that it took us
three days to recover. Dolphins we seldom
catch, they are so clever that you would
think they could smell the net at a thousand
yards distance. Now and then one will
forget himself in the heat of his chase after
a tunny; but, when he does get into our
death chamber, he examines coolly every
mesh, and if he finds a damaged rope, or a
place where the net is somewhat thinner or
weaker than elsewhere, he makes a dash at it
with his whole body, beats his way through,
and escapes. So far as he is himself
concerned we can afford to let him go. His flesh
is bad, and he is useful to us when he has his
liberty, for he will often hunt a tunny into
the Mandrague."

We formed our little fleet of boats into two
lines, so that we had the submerged death-
chamber between us. One boat with high
bulwarks took on board and held fast one
end of the net while the men in a similar
boat, stationed at some distance, began hauling
at the other end, and bringing the caged
fishes nearer and nearer to the surface. We
in the two rows of boats, holding the parallel
edges of the Mandrague, had also begun