day; but as a compensation for so strict a confinement, you have my permission to be upon deck from sunset till sunrise. You will of course behave yourself in a decent and becoming manner, not allowing yourself to be led away to beguile the monotony of the voyage by making strange and unearthly noises, or by alarming any one in any way, as has been frequently the custom among ghosts of bad manners in former times. I have myself an objection to smoking, but I shall not interfere with your indulgence in that pursuit any further than by refusing to confer upon you the power of rendering your pipe invisible; and as it would be unseemly, opposed to the recognised order of things, and creative of remarks derogatory to our order, that a pipe should be seen of itself in mid-air, I must request that you will retire below whenever you feel inclined to indulge yourself in that, to me, offensive habit. You will order your cabin to be kept locked during the voyage; but should any one, nevertheless, intrude himself upon your privacy, you will of course have the right of appearing to and conversing with him so long as such intrusion shall continue. You will receive the requisite funds for your journey, upon application at the proper office, and you are authorised to appear in a human form for the purpose of taking your passage.’ Having concluded this lengthy harangue, he bowed me out, and I lost no time in securing this cabin. I was afraid that I should pass the whole voyage without the pleasure of conversation, but your lucky invasion has caused me to enjoy a very pleasant night. Now that we have once made acquaintance, I shall be delighted to see more of you.” “Shall you?” said I; “and pray do you think I have nothing better to do with my nights than to spend them in listening to your dreary stories? No, sir; sooner than that, I will endure all the inconveniences which a sojourn with the three ruffians whose companionship I enjoy can inflict upon me.” “Sir,” said he, “your remarks surprise me. You bribe the steward to admit you into my private cabin, exposing him upon detection to the chances of dismissal; you occupy my bed, you deposit your clothes upon my sofa, and when I seek to entertain you and refresh myself by my highly instructive conversation, you treat me with insult. I can only inform you, sir, that you will find out the harshness of your conduct as soon as you are condemned to spend sixteen consecutive hours in an elm coffin down in the hold of a ship amongst the bilge water. But it is time for me to retire. Though it is dark enough below, here; yet I feel that daylight is at hand.” With these words he arose, made me a formal bow, extinguished the light, and, I suppose, vanished through the key-hole, for when I awoke in the morning, I was alone.
“And did you never see anything more of him?” inquired one of the listeners.
“Never. As I did not consider his conversasation cheap at the price of one pound per night, I did not buy any more of it; but, instead of wasting my money, I made friends with my whisky-drinking companions, who turned out very good fellows, and with whom, on my arrival here, I came up to the diggings. Last year, about this time, I had some business at Mr. John Simpson’s station, near which I was at work. A violent storm came on while I was there, and the creek rose so much that it was impossible for me to return to the camp that night. Mr. Simpson, therefore, very kindly offered me supper and a bed. During the evening I had the misfortune to break my pipe. ‘I can,’ he said, ‘only offer you a clay, for I have no other in the house.’ ‘Have you not a very handsome meerschaum?’ said I, involuntarily. He looked at me for a moment with surprise, and then replied, laughing: ‘I had certainly, but my wife, there, compelled me to part with it.’ ‘And with good reason,’ said she. I made no remark, but from their words I infer that my friend, the ghost, had at last succeeded in securing his prize.”
“Well,” said the storekeeper, “I suppose that’s all true.”
“Every word of it.”
“Then all I can say is, that I shouldn’t have believed it had I heard it from any one else.”
THE COD FISHERY.
Having in a previous paper given a brief account of the method used in “Trawl Fishing” with the net for the supply of metropolitan and other tables with soles, plaice, and such like staple commodities of the fish-market, it may be interesting to contrast with that fishery the means employed for taking the cod, whiting, and other choice inhabitants of the seas which are not usually caught with nets, but with hooks and lines.
“Long-lining,” as it is familiarly called by those who prosecute this kind of fishery, is not only practised most extensively on our own coasts, but also on those of Newfoundland, Holland, Denmark, Sweden, and other countries. To say nothing of the many thousands to whom this kind of fishery affords a means of livelihood, it is in itself, as a matter of pleasure to the sea-side visitor, one of the most amusing pastimes possible to conceive. The writer, who has enjoyed this exciting sport times innumerable, knows of no other—not even salmon fishing—more exciting and exhilarating.
The wholesale fishery is carried on by small fishing smacks or “bangers,” as the fishermen popularly term them, each of which is constructed with a large deep well, into which the fresh sea-water is allowed to enter by means of a grating. This is for a double purpose, viz., to keep the fish alive after taken as long as possible, and also to enable the cod-smack to remain at sea as long as may suffice to catch a good supply of fish before proceeding to that part of the coast where there may be a market for them. Each smack carries a “fleet” of lines, as they are termed, varying in length from one to three miles, but of course the amateur fisherman would commence with a small “fleet” of not a tenth part that number. The cod line itself is in thickness about that of a blacklead pencil, and to it are attached, at intervals of a fathom apart, smaller lines a yard long, and not much thicker than twine. These are