Pagina 322 di 416

Last of all were the seiners after herring and mackerel,

schooners mostly, and out of Gloucester or Nova Scotia ports, who

secured their catch by encircling schools of fish that played

atop of the water with nets a quarter of a mile long, and pursued

them in by drawstrings much as a man closes a tobacco-pouch.

This was the cosmopolitan city that lived on the unmarked lanes

of the ocean and preyed upon the never-failing supplies of fish

that moved beneath.