‘You didn’t get any herring this morning, then?’

‘If we had, we wouldn’t be here now! No, we only got a few mackerel. Would you like some?’

And before we could properly protest, the skipper had his knife out and his young son had three fat mackerel on the gunwale. Then—a small thing this, but somehow typical—the skipper’s pocket knife was so sharp that it cut right through the hard head of the mackerel and along the bone as if it were slicing butter. Inside a couple of minutes he presented us with the three fish split and cleaned. At once he wanted them back, for the galley was in good trim and would fry them for us in no time. But we refused to give them back.

Later on when we were presented with three fresh herring out of a dozen or so which they were obviously keeping in a small box for their own use, we protested strongly.

‘Nonsense!’ he said. ‘If it wasn’t you it would be somebody else.’

We were strangers to them and still do not know their names, as they do not know ours (if they have remembered us at all).

And while this was going on, the rain was coming down in buckets. I hadn’t put on my oilskin trousers and my knee-boots were full. The Mate was wet to the skin. Ben Nevis—the most spectacular view is from Banavie—rolled massive rain clouds over its summit and down into its glens. I heard a click! behind me. The rain streaming off her sou’wester, the Crew had tried for a photograph!

They could not give any reason for the failure of the herring fishing on the West, though the mate, a quiet reasonable man, blamed the presence of large numbers of squids. In a long talk with him, wherein old sailing days were contrasted with the present steam age, I found him inclined to think that the courses of nature were nowadays being interfered with. The herring shoals were getting broken up before in the ordinary way they would have come inshore. Ring-netting also tended to destroy immature herring. There must be a limit even to nature’s bounty. You cannot go on bagging the golden egg without giving the goose a chance. The same thing could be seen happening to-day in many of the small ports of the Moray Firth. In the old days, with line fishing, you always got white fish and the best white fish. Along comes the seine-net. For a time there is great profit. Then the drags get less profitable and less profitable, until at last the men are working harder than they did with the lines and not getting so sure a result.

‘And not getting the fish to eat themselves, for the best must always go to the market. And the country folk around —they can no longer buy them,’ said a member of the crew.

Meantime the sea bottom is being cleaned. Great hauls of immature fish are taken aboard and shovelled back—to help to feed the gulls. ‘I have done it myself,’ said the mate. A slower process with the herring, no doubt. There are immense shoals in the sea and they move about mysteriously. But the drifters are getting into debt.