think.
They worked on silently until Mrs Puckey stopped suddenly and listened; from afar off there was a faint cry—it was repeated with an urgency that set Stirk's hair on end. 'It's th' huer,' she breathed. 'God be praised!'
'Th' huer?' Stirk asked, in astonishment, as the cry was taken up from windows and rooftops along the steep hillsides and round the harbour. People hurried from their houses and fields and began to scramble for the lower parts, the cry now plain. 'Hevva! Hevva!
'Wha—'
'See?' She pointed down to the rocks that guarded the entrance to the harbour. On the highest Stirk could see a figure capering about, clutching what looked like a tin trumpet through which he kept up his cry.
'The huer! Hue 'n' cry! Get down wi' ye,' she shouted, and pushed past him. 'The pilchards're here!'
Stirk looked out to sea; below circling and plummeting gannets he saw a peculiar long stain of red-purple and silver in the water extending for a mile or more. With the rest he scrambled and slid until he reached the path and joined the throng converging on the harbour.
A sharp-faced man with an open notebook sized him up in an instant. 'Pull an oar?' he snapped.
'Aye.'
'Volyer,' he ordered, and gestured impatiently at a curious low and broad open boat being readied.
Sitting at his oar Stirk grinned to himself: a gunner's mate brought to this pass! But if he didn't show willing to lend a fist with the rest, his chances of getting near to them would fade.
A net was manoeuvred into the boat and as they pulled out of the harbour the plan was explained to him: the other boat had the main 'stop' net to encircle as much of the pilchard shoal as they could, at which point their boat would close the gap and assist to bring ashore the captives. A third boat, the lurker, would bear the master seiner who would direct the operation.
Stirk knew there would be hard, skilled work before the fish could be landed. They made a wide sweep, carefully approached the shoal from seaward and slowed to a stop. The man on the oar opposite nudged him: the huer on the high rocks had stopped his cries and was now holding a coloured cloth in each outstretched hand which he wig-wagged in a series of signals, watched attentively by the master seiner.
'Give way, y' bastards,' he bawled, throwing the tiller over. Their own boat followed obediently, and Stirk saw they were essentially being directed by the watcher high on the rocks to where the fish were, and the master seiner was deploying accordingly.
At just the right moment and place, the quarter-mile-long stop seine began shooting into the sea along its length in a curve right in the path of the shoal and when it was out the toil of joining the ends together in a vast circle started.
It was back-breaking work, bringing the inert mass of seine net and the weight of uncountable thousands of fish into a vast circle, but that was nothing compared to the unending travail that followed of towing the entire mass to the nearest sandy bottom, Lantivet Bay, where the fish would finally come ashore.
The secluded beach, no more than a couple of miles from Polperro, was crowded with excited people; the boats came closer and just when the mottled black and pale of the seabed glimmered up through the clear water, the master seiner called a halt.
Resting on their oars, the men of the stop seine boat watched as Stirk's companions readied their own tuck net, whose purpose soon became plain. Smaller than the stop seine, it was shot within the larger, then brought tightly together, gathering the catch to the surface in an appalling agitation of threshing fish, screaming gulls and the frantic plunging of stones on ropes to deter escape at the rapidly diminishing opening.
'Lade 'im!' yelled the master seiner, pounding the gunwale of his boat with excitement.
Everyone aboard the volyer threw themselves at the fish. With tuck baskets, broad flaskets and bare hands they scooped them as fast as they could into the boat.
Ashore, children screamed and frolicked, women clustered with baskets and called to their men in exhilaration, and when the boat was finally heaved into the shallows they, too, joined in the glorious mayhem.
The sheer quantity of fish caught was colossal: tons in weight, hundreds of thousands of silver shapes swirling in the stop net, but the master seiner, eyeing the haul, stopped the tuck and declared, 'That'll do fer now, boys.' The rest could safely be left to mill about in the net for later.
'Well, Jem, how d' ye like our fishin'? Sport enough, heh?' The Three Pilchards was in a roaring good mood, fishermen with their immediate futures now secure drinking to their good fortune.
Stirk lifted his pot. 'Decent taut, this'n,' he growled. 'Ye'll have another, Davey, mate?'
'A glass o' bright cider is jus' what I needs,' Bunt answered expansively. 'Fishin' gives thee such a thirst an' all.'
Signalling to the harried pot-boy, Stirk said, 'S' now ye has a right good haul then.'
Bunt leant forward and said earnestly, 'Pilchards mean a brave lot t' us, Jem. As we do say in these parts:
Puckey came across and sat with them. 'This is Long Tom Shar, Jem. Thee should know, as fer hake an' conger there ain't a finer hand.'
Solemnly Stirk allowed himself to be acquainted as well with Zeb Minards and Sam Coad, the bushy-browed blacksmith. It was happening—his work in the boats was paying off.
He saw Calloway in one corner in close conversation with a shy fisher-girl still in her pinafore. Stirk winked when he caught his eye and turned back to hear about the hazards and rewards of drift-netting.
Suddenly the happy noise subsided. Two men had entered: these were no fisher-folk and they looked about guardedly. One by one the fishermen turned their backs, the tavern taking on a pointed silence.
'Who're them, mates?' Stirk asked.
