If you conceive a bag forty to fifty feet in length, you will have some approximate notion of the size of a trawl-net. The mouth of it is stretched wide apart by a pole like a builder’s scaffold-pole, heavily shod at each end with iron, for the purpose of weighing down the mouth of the net as it is drawn10, or “trawled,” along the bottom of the sea. Sailing out of harbour, the trawl-net is “shot” the length of some seventy fathoms11, necessary to reach the bottom of the fishing-grounds in Torbay, and thus, going with the wind for six to eight hours, the smacks13 drag their exaggerated bags along the bed of ocean, scooping14 up whatever lies in the way. It may thus justly be supposed that the bed of Torbay is a pretty well-swept floor.
It is a comparatively easy thing to shoot a trawl-net, but a long and laborious15 job for two men, straining at the winch, to wind it aboard again, with its load of fish, often very largely useless. So soon as the hauling up of the nets begins,[162] myriads16 of sea-gulls, springing apparently17 from nowhere in particular, appear, with the instantaneous promptitude of a crowd in a quiet street of London when an accident has happened. Screaming and circling about, dipping instantaneously into the water, and rising up quickly, they often make daring snatches at the fish aboard. Surely there is nothing so sharp-eyed on earth, in air, or water, as a sea-gull, and nothing so greedy and insatiable. The sea-gull is the scavenger18 of the fisher towns and villages, and is not nice in his tastes. Nothing comes amiss to his hungry maw, from fresh fish down to stale, ancient enough to be a very monument of offence and a something beyond the worst experiences of a sanitary19 inspector20; and the dead kittens and rats of the seaside communities form welcome side-dishes.
The gulls’ turn, however, comes when the sorting of the nets begins. When the useless dog-fish are flung overboard they struggle and guzzle21 their fill: for, unfortunately for the fisherfolk, the dog-fish are never lacking, although the saleable fish may be often sadly to seek. But now dog-fish are often marketed as “flake.” The catch is generally a miscellaneous one of turbot, bream, plaice, whiting, hake, haddock, gurnet, sole, and brill, with a few lobsters22, crabs23, and eels25, and when the undesirables26 among the fish, and the stones and the seaweed, are sorted out, frequently resolves itself into a dozen or so pair of soles, and a few baskets and “trunks” of other fish. The aristocracy of the catch are, of course, the turbot and the soles, but when a bad day’s trawling and a day of poor market prices come together, the day’s labour for three men may not bring the skipper more than twelve shillings and his two men four shillings apiece.
The fish is sold by auction27 in the long-roofed but open-sided shed that runs the whole length of the harbour, and the auctioneers settle weekly with the skippers, after deducting28 their commission, the market-dues, and the earnings29 of the lumpers,[165] as the fish-porters who carry the catches from the smack12 to the market are called. Rougher, more rugged30, ragged31, or more quaintly32 dressed and bearded men than those of the Brixham trawling fleet, and those others who attend the auctions33, it would be difficult to find; but many among them are of the famous “Brixham lords.” A “Brixham lord” is the product at a considerable distance of time, of the vicissitudes34 of the old lords of the manor35 of Brixham. That manor, passing from the Novants and the Valletorts, and coming eventually to the Bonviles, was at length divided into quarters, of which one quarter came to the Gilberts, from whom it was purchased by what in these financial days we should term a “syndicate” of twelve fishermen. In the course of many generations and the natural subdivision of property, those original twelve shares of that quarter have been so apportioned36 that the “lords” of Brixham, owning infinitesimal portions of the manor, are a very large crowd indeed. Some of them, too, are “ladies.” The saying of Brixham[166] is therefore easily credible37, that there are more lords of the manor in it than in any other town in England.
A pathetic literary interest belongs to Brixham, for it was here that the Rev38. Henry Francis Lyte was vicar for twenty-five years. He died at Naples, whither he had gone to seek health, in his fifty-fourth year. One last evening, before he left Brixham for ever, as he knew it must be, he prayed that he might be allowed to write something by which the memory of him might be kept green to all time, and, returning from the fisher-town as sun was setting, to Berry Head House, conceived and wrote that best-known of hymns39, “Abide with Me.” In the widespread favour it immediately obtained, and in the vogue41 it must ever retain while hymns last, his prayer was answered. It is a beautiful hymn40, but a thing of tears, depression, and hopelessness, that leaves you a great deal worse, and a great deal more self-pitying, than before indulging in it. As well might one suggest sitting in a draught42 as the remedy for a cold, as hope to revive the spirits on “Abide with Me.” It is beautiful, but for my part, I want something more uplifting and robustious, and would rather go forth43 and do battle with blue-devils and kick stumbling-blocks out of the way, and keep a stout44 heart to the ultimate breath, on some swashbuckling Hew-Agag-in-Pieces-before-the-Lord psalmody, than dissolve in tears on the minor45 key of “Abide with Me.”
[167]
Berry Head is a kind of natural barrier, or unsurmountable wall, to the Brixham people. You will readily understand why it should be so, if you seek to walk round to Kingswear by the coast. It is so, not so much by reason of the steepness and ruggedness46 of the way, for the road out of Brixham, up-along to the railway-station and so on to Churston Ferrers, is equally heart-breaking, but there are all manner of occasions for going in that direction; while few have any business, or pleasure either, over Berry Head, or along that lonely and rugged coast, save some poor fool of an exploring tourist who, encountering rain on these shelterless coastguard walks, is fain to think, like the Melancholy47 Jaques in Arden, that when he was at home, he was in a better place. Hence the peculiar48 appositeness of the Brixham synonym49 for death, “going round the Head,” as it were into the Unknown. “Bless ’ee! ’er’s bin2 gone round the Head these dree months” was the reply to an inquiry50 after one recently dead.
Primed with all this knowledge, it is scarcely with uplifted heart that the explorer scales these minatory51 heights. On the way to the Head the road looks down upon the incomplete breakwater, begun in 1843 and abandoned when 1,300 feet of it had been built and £21,000 expended52. Across the bay lies Torquay, glorious in the sunshine; behind us is the end of the world, as it seems—the gorsy plateau of the Head, with a forlorn refreshment53 house among the ruins of[168] five forts erected54 during the Napoleonic scare, themselves built amid the walls and earthworks of the Romans, constructed some 1850 years ago. Here is the Ash Hole, a cavern55 where the soldiers of the early nineteenth century flung the bones and broken pottery56 and domestic refuse of their barracks on the top of a similar deposit made by the Roman soldiery of the first century of our era. And beneath the potsherds of the Romans is stalagmite, and beneath that again the bones of animals extinct aeons before Rome began. Ugh!
From hence it is an easy walk to the sheer edge of this great mass of pink limestone57, which drops perpendicularly58 down into deep water. Round the point, the cliffs grow darker and more jagged, with the Cod59 Rock and Mewstone out in the sea and Durl Head, splashed pink and black, marked by a deserted60 iron mine.
Durl Head looks across to Mudstone Sands, not really muddy, and Sharkham Point. Inland, in between them, is Windmill Hill, with its celebrated61 cave, sharing the prehistoric62 honours of Kent’s Cavern. No visitor to Brixham who arrives by steamboat is likely to be left in ignorance of “Philp’s Cave,” for handbills extolling63 the glories of it are plentifully64 distributed at such times.
Philp was a dyer who in 1857 determined65 to leave his dyeing and go in for quarrying66, and to this end purchased a plot of land here of the Commissioners67 for the enclosure of Waste Lands.[169] He soon got to work, and in the following January the cave “discovered” itself by engulfing69 a quarrying tool that Philp in person was using. He explored the place and found it to be a tunnel running fifty feet into the hill, with a further gallery at the end, in another direction. Stalagmite made a continuous covering on the floor, and from it projected bones which scientific men who soon flocked to the spot proclaimed to be those of reindeer70 and cave-bears. Among them were the flint implements71 of prehistoric man, who seems never to have returned for them, for his bones are not among the remains72. Perhaps one of the hyænas of Kent’s Cavern cut him off, untimely.
I think the ten miles (for it is not an inch less) round from Mudstone Bay to Kingswear is the loneliest, and the most scrambly and tiring, coast climb in South Devon. Rocks succeed sands, and sands follow rocks; headlands alternating with bays, and ups with downs. Now you face west, now south, then something betwixt and between; and if you don’t quite box the compass, you do so very nearly. Every coombe, every headland, has a name, but they are all of a likeness73: Sharkham Point, Southdown Head, Man Sands, Crab24 Rock Point, Long Sands, Scabbacombe Sands, Down Head, Ivy74 Cove68, Pudcombe Cove, Kelly’s Cove, and Froward Point. Not a soul will you see, not a house, save the coastguards and their station and cottages at Man Sands. And this is overcrowded England!
[170]
Off Froward Point, black and splintered and well-named, is yet another Mewstone, with a companion, the Cat Stone; and the Black Rock some distance out. From here we turn gradually round and come by Mill Bay, under the tall white day-mark on the hill-top, to Kingswear Castle.
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1
picturesque
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| adj.美丽如画的，（语言）生动的，绘声绘色的 | |
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bin
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| n.箱柜；vt.放入箱内；[计算机] DOS文件名:二进制目标文件 | |
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pictorial
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| adj.绘画的；图片的；n．画报 | |
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vessels
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| n.血管( vessel的名词复数 )；船；容器；（具有特殊品质或接受特殊品质的）人 | |
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technically
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| adv.专门地，技术上地 | |
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costly
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| adj.昂贵的，价值高的，豪华的 | |
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partnership
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| n.合作关系，伙伴关系 | |
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virtue
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| n.德行，美德；贞操；优点；功效，效力 | |
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extravagantly
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| adv.挥霍无度地 | |
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drawn
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| v.拖，拉，拔出；adj.憔悴的，紧张的 | |
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fathoms
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| 英寻( fathom的名词复数 ) | |
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smack
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| vt.拍，打，掴；咂嘴；vi.含有…意味；n.拍 | |
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smacks
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| 掌掴（声）( smack的名词复数 )； 海洛因； （打的）一拳； 打巴掌 | |
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14
scooping
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| n.捞球v.抢先报道( scoop的现在分词 )；（敏捷地）抱起；抢先获得；用铲[勺]等挖（洞等） | |
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15
laborious
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| adj.吃力的，努力的，不流畅 | |
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myriads
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| n.无数，极大数量( myriad的名词复数 ) | |
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apparently
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| adv.显然地；表面上，似乎 | |
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scavenger
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| n.以腐尸为食的动物，清扫工 | |
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19
sanitary
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| adj.卫生方面的，卫生的，清洁的，卫生的 | |
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inspector
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| n.检查员，监察员，视察员 | |
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guzzle
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| v.狂饮，暴食 | |
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lobsters
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| 龙虾( lobster的名词复数 )； 龙虾肉 | |
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crabs
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| n.蟹( crab的名词复数 )；阴虱寄生病；蟹肉v.捕蟹( crab的第三人称单数 ) | |
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crab
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| n.螃蟹，偏航，脾气乖戾的人，酸苹果；vi.捕蟹，偏航，发牢骚；vt.使偏航，发脾气 | |
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eels
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| abbr. 电子发射器定位系统（=electronic emitter location system） | |
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undesirables
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| 不受欢迎的人，不良分子( undesirable的名词复数 ) | |
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auction
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| n.拍卖；拍卖会；vt.拍卖 | |
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deducting
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| v.扣除，减去( deduct的现在分词 ) | |
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earnings
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| n.工资收人；利润，利益，所得 | |
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30
rugged
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| adj.高低不平的，粗糙的，粗壮的，强健的 | |
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ragged
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| adj.衣衫褴褛的，粗糙的，刺耳的 | |
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quaintly
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| adv.古怪离奇地 | |
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auctions
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| n.拍卖，拍卖方式( auction的名词复数 ) | |
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vicissitudes
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| n.变迁，世事变化；变迁兴衰( vicissitude的名词复数 )；盛衰兴废 | |
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manor
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| n.庄园，领地 | |
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apportioned
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| vt.分摊，分配（apportion的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
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credible
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| adj.可信任的，可靠的 | |
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rev
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| v.发动机旋转，加快速度 | |
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39
hymns
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| n.赞美诗，圣歌，颂歌( hymn的名词复数 ) | |
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hymn
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| n.赞美诗，圣歌，颂歌 | |
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41
Vogue
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| n.时髦，时尚；adj.流行的 | |
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42
draught
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| n.拉，牵引，拖；一网（饮，吸，阵)；顿服药量，通风；v.起草，设计 | |
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43
forth
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| adv.向前；向外，往外 | |
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45
minor
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| adj.较小(少)的，较次要的；n.辅修学科；vi.辅修 | |
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46
ruggedness
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| 险峻，粗野； 耐久性； 坚固性 | |
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melancholy
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| n.忧郁，愁思；adj.令人感伤（沮丧）的，忧郁的 | |
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48
peculiar
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| adj.古怪的，异常的；特殊的，特有的 | |
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49
synonym
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| n.同义词，换喻词 | |
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50
inquiry
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| n.打听，询问，调查，查问 | |
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51
minatory
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| adj.威胁的；恫吓的 | |
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52
expended
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| v.花费( expend的过去式和过去分词 )；使用（钱等）做某事；用光；耗尽 | |
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53
refreshment
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| n.恢复，精神爽快，提神之事物；（复数）refreshments:点心，茶点 | |
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54
ERECTED
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| adj. 直立的，竖立的，笔直的 vt. 使 ... 直立，建立 | |
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55
cavern
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| n.洞穴，大山洞 | |
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56
pottery
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| n.陶器，陶器场 | |
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57
limestone
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| n.石灰石 | |
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58
perpendicularly
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| adv. 垂直地, 笔直地, 纵向地 | |
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59
cod
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| n.鳕鱼；v.愚弄；哄骗 | |
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60
deserted
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| adj.荒芜的，荒废的，无人的，被遗弃的 | |
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61
celebrated
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| adj.有名的，声誉卓著的 | |
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62
prehistoric
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| adj.（有记载的）历史以前的，史前的，古老的 | |
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63
extolling
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| v.赞美( extoll的现在分词 )；赞颂，赞扬，赞美( extol的现在分词 ) | |
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64
plentifully
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| adv. 许多地，丰饶地 | |
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65
determined
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| adj.坚定的；有决心的 | |
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66
quarrying
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| v.采石；从采石场采得( quarry的现在分词 )；从（书本等中）努力发掘（资料等）；在采石场采石 | |
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67
commissioners
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| n.专员( commissioner的名词复数 )；长官；委员；政府部门的长官 | |
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68
cove
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| n.小海湾，小峡谷 | |
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69
engulfing
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| adj.吞噬的v.吞没，包住( engulf的现在分词 ) | |
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70
reindeer
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| n.驯鹿 | |
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71
implements
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| n.工具( implement的名词复数 )；家具；手段；[法律]履行（契约等）v.实现( implement的第三人称单数 )；执行；贯彻；使生效 | |
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72
remains
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| n.剩余物，残留物；遗体，遗迹 | |
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73
likeness
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| n.相像，相似（之处） | |
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ivy
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| n.常青藤，常春藤 | |
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