It was a strange sensation and makes a strange story.  All the time that we were storm-stayed at Webeck the “spurt” continued, and the trap owners were tired but jubilant.  The “hand-lining” crews were correspondingly depressed, for, though so plenty, not a cod would bite a hook.  It is this reason, that is, because an abundance of food brings the cod to the shores in great numbers and at the same time prevents them from being hungry, that led to the abandonment of trawling and the universal adoption of the trap method.  We did not see a single trawl on the coast, and it is doubtful if there was one there in use.

During these spurts, the day’s work just begins, in fact, after the hard labor of rowing the heavy boats out, perhaps two miles, to the trap, hauling, mending the net, loading and unloading the fish—­always a hard task and sometimes a very difficult one on account of the heavy sea—­has been repeated three or four times; for the number of fish is so great that the stage becomes overloaded by night, and the boat crews then have to turn to and help take care of the catch and clear the stage for the next day’s operations.  Till long after midnight the work goes merrily on in the huts or shelters over the stages, for the hard work then means no starvation next winter in the Newfoundland homes, and the fish are split, cleaned, headed, salted and packed with incredible rapidity.

The tired crews get an hour or two of sleep just as they are; then, after a pot of black tea and a handful of bread, start out to begin the next day’s work, resting and eating during the hour between the trips, and then going out again, and repeating the some monotonous round over and over till we wondered how they lived through it, and what was to be done with all the fish.  When there is a good breeze the boats are rigged and a large part of the weary labor of rowing is escaped.  How tired the crews would look as the big twenty-four feet boats went dashing by our vessel in the fog and rain, on the outward trip, and how happy, though if possible more tired, as they came back three or four hours later, loaded to the gunwale with cod, and thinking, perhaps, of the bags full that they had left buoyed near the trap because the boat would not carry the whole catch.  It is a hard life, and no wonder the men are not much more than animals; but they work with dogged persistence, for in a little more than two months enough must be earned to support their families for the year.  When the “spurt” ends the crews get a much needed rest, and attend to getting a supply of salt ashore from the salt vessel from Cadiz, Spain, one of which we found lying in nearly every fishing harbor, serving as a storehouse for that article so necessary to the fishermen.