They all wait for the word from Uncle Cephus. They leave the timing to him. Uncle Cephus ships his oars suddenly and stands up. That is the signal. The boys leap to the oars, swing the dories about and row for dear life above the stakes across the channel to their starting point, doubling the seines up behind them as they bend to the oars. They splash now all they can, urged on by strong words from Uncle Cephus and Uncle Timothy. All three great loops are drawn into smaller and smaller pockets. The dories are made fast to the stakes. All the men and boys pull the pockets in and in. bringing the leadline, which is at the bottom of the nets, faster than the curkline, to keep what fish they may have from going our under. There are only the last pockets. They have them aboard. They come too easily, filled with nothing Skunked. Only a few handfuls of smelts and a lot of irate crabs and spiny, growling sculpins shine up at them in the lanterns' light.
“Oh well, this is a flood night,” declares Father. And Cephus nods. They all sit quiet for a bit and wait for the change of the tide. They smoke and chew and drink again. Cephus knows when the tide turns without touching so much as a little linger to the water. He gives the quiet word now. The boys start rowing, the seines go overboard again from the spreading hands of the standing men. Once at the opposite side, with all the nets out full length, they row to the southward now and lean against the slow push of the flooding tide. Once again Uncle Cephus gives the signal, and they cross the channel now below the stakes. They shout and splash the water all they can all the way. The surprised bay echoes with the loud boys.
This time the last pockets are vast burdens to bring aboard. All hands have to give a hand to each one. And when the pocket is dumped into the dories, the boats are snowed over with flakes of flying silver, and the live fish Hood the boat's bottom. In the light of the lanterns loom hundreds on hundreds of pounds of smelts, bright eyes burning with death, small mouths choking on the empty air. Silver smelts, capelins like splinters of a winter moon, deepbellied sunfish, baby bluefish like flakes of the sky, green triangles of flounders. horned sculpins, emerald tomcods, and here and there the wild torments that are crazed eels. It is like looking into the nebulae in outer space. They reload the seine dories and row home.
At the wharf it is like a page out of the Arabian Nights. Peter's father and Uncle Cephus and Uncle Timothy stand up like tall jinns and dip up dip nets of live silver and pour them out over the planks. The boys look alive, bend down, and sort out the big smelts from the little blue-fish and the butterfish. A late marsh hen flies over, startled into screams by the sight of so much food. The smelts are sorted at lust. The herring and unwanted bluefish and the rest are for the gardens and for the fields of hay and corn next summer—just as these salt-water farmers learned the value of sea fertilizer from the Indians generations ago. The smelts are for the Boston fish markets, and they mean many dollars towards a new mowing machine and new harnesses.
But the tenderest baby bluefish and the largest of the deep-bellied sunfish are for the frying pan Cephus thought to bring down to the shore. Uncle Timothy has a fierce fire of dry spruce going in two shakes of a lamb's tail and six flourishes of his jackknife. Uncle Cephus cuts up hunks of pork and greases his pan. The fish go in. They curl up double into splinters of delight. Uncle Cephus tosses fried flakes of moonlight into boys' laps left and right. The pork has seasoned the fish. For once the boys do not have to eat anything else, bread or johnnycake, with their fish. They don't have to keep count. They stow them in as only hungry boys who have been out half the night on salt water can stow them.
The men take a hand at the second or third frying pan, They and the boys eat like Indians, using both hands, blowing out backbones and ribs, eating the fish flame-hot, swallowing guts and heads and fins. The eat far into the night, till they are able to eat no more. Then they sit back on their haunches and dream.
The big September stars slide over. Uncle Timothy keeps up his fire, and the spruce brush sends up earth-stars to mingle with the sky's. Uncle Cephus puffs on his pipe. Uncle Timothy shoots a jet of tobacco juice every so often into the embers. Father uncorks the bourbon and passes it round. And four boys full of tender young fish sit warm on their heels and think as little Indian boys did, under these same stars, on this same cove, with these same fish inside them more than a thousand or so years ago.
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