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A hundred years and more had the Grande Mignon fishermen gone out

with net and handline and trawl; and for that length of time the

millions in the sea had fed, clothed, and housed the thousand on

the island. When prices had been good there were even luxuries,

and history tells of men who, in one haul from a weir, have made

their twenty-five thousand dollars in an hour.

This was all gone now. The fish had failed.

Day after day since early spring the men had put to sea in their

sloops and motor-dories, trawling and hand-lining from twenty

miles out in the Atlantic to four and a half fathoms off Dutch

Edge. The result was the same. The fish were poor and few. Even

at Bulkhead Rip, where the sixty-pounders played among the racing

tides, there was scarcely a bite.