"I'm no sleepin', Annie," said Lizzy, "though, like Ma'colm's auld man," she added with a sigh, "I wad whiles fain be."
Now, there were reasons why Malcolm should not be unwilling to tell the strange wild story requested of him, and he commenced it at once, but modified the Scotch of it considerably for the sake of the unaccustomed ears. When it was ended Clementina said nothing, Annie Mair said "Hech, sirs!" and Lizzy, with a great sigh, remarked, "The deil maun be in a' thing whaur God hasna a han', I'm thinkin'."
"Ye may tak yer aith upo' that," rejoined Malcolm.
It was a custom in Peter's boat never to draw the nets without a prayer, uttered now by one, now by another of the crew. Upon this occasion, whether it was in deference to Malcolm, who, as he well understood, did not like long prayers, or that the presence of Clementina exercised some restraint upon his spirit, out of the bows of the boat came now the solemn voice of its master, bearing only this one sentence: "O Thoo, wha didst tell thy dissiples to cast the net upo' the side whaur swam the fish, gien it be Thy wull 'at we catch the nicht, lat 's catch: gien it binna Thy wull, lat's no catch.--Haul awa', my laads."
Up sprang the men and went each to his place, and straight a torrent of gleaming fish was pouring in over the gunwale of the boat. Such a take it was ere the last of the nets was drawn as the oldest of them had seldom seen. Thousands of fish there were that had never got into the meshes at all.
"I cannot understand it," said Clementina. "There are multitudes more fish than there are meshes in the nets to catch them: if they are not caught, why do they not swim away?"
"Because they are drowned, my lady," answered Malcolm.
"What do you mean by that? How can you drown a fish?"
"You may call it _suffocated_ you like, my lady: it is all the same. You have read of panic-stricken people, when a church or a theatre is on fire, rushing to the door all in a heap and crowding each other to death? It is something like that with the fish. They are swimming along in a great shoal, yards thick; and when the first can get no farther, that does not at once stop the rest, any more than it would in a crowd of people: those that are behind come pressing up into every corner where there is room till they are one dense mass. Then they push and push to get forward, and can't get through, and the rest come still crowding on behind and above and below, till a multitude of them are jammed so tight against each other that they can't open their gills; and even if they could, there would not be air enough for them. You've seen the goldfish in the swan-basin, my lady, how they open and shut their gills constantly: that's their way of getting air out of the water by some wonderful contrivance nobody understands, for they need breath just as much as we do; and to close their gills is to them the same as closing a man's mouth and nose. That's how the most of those herrings are taken."