The New England fishermen, in the main, seek three sorts of fish—­the mackerel, the cod, and the halibut.  These they find on the shallow banks which border the coast from the southern end of Delaware to the very entrance of Baffin’s Bay.  The mackerel is a summer fish, coming and going with the regularity of the equinoxes themselves.  Early in March, they appear off the coast, and all summer work their way northward, until, in early November, they disappear off the coast of Labrador, as suddenly as though some titanic seine had swept the ocean clear of them.  What becomes of the mackerel in winter, neither the inquisitive fisherman nor the investigating scientist has ever been able to determine.  They do not, like migratory birds, reappear in more temperate southern climes, but vanish utterly from sight.  Eight months, therefore, is the term of the mackerel fishing, and the men engaged in it escape the bitterest rigors of the winter fisheries on the Newfoundland Banks, where the cod is taken from January to January.  Yet it has dangers of its own—­dangers of a sort that, to the sailor, are more menacing than the icebergs or even the swift-rushing ocean liners of the Great Banks.  For mackerel fishing is pursued close in shore, in shallow water, where the sand lies a scant two fathoms below the surface, and a north-east wind will, in a few minutes, raise, a roaring sea that will pound the stoutest vessel to bits against the bottom.  With plenty of sea-room, and water enough under the keel, the sailor cares little for wind or waves; but in the shallows, with the beach only a few miles to the leeward, and the breakers showing white through the darkness, like the fangs of a beast of prey, the captain of a fishing schooner on George’s banks has need of every resource of the sailor, if he is to beat his way off, and not feed the fishes that he came to take.  Nowhere is the barometer watched more carefully than on the boats cruising about on George’s.  When its warning column falls, the whole fleet makes for the open sea, however good the fishing may be.  But, with all possible caution, the losses are so many that George’s, early in its history, came to have the ghoulish nickname of “Dead Men’s Bank.”

North of George’s Bank—­which lies directly east of Cape Cod—­are found, in order, Brown’s Bank, La Have, Western Bank—­in the center of which lies Sable Island, famed as an ocean graveyard, whose shifting sands are as thickly strewn with the bleaching ribs of stout ships as an old green churchyard is set with mossy marbles—­St. Peter’s Bank, and the Grand Bank of Newfoundland.  All of these lie further out to sea than George’s, and are tenanted only by cod and halibut, though in the waters near the shore the fishermen pursue the mackerel, the herring—­which, in cottonseed oil masquerades as American sardines—­and the menhaden, used chiefly for fertilizer.  The boats used in the fisheries are virtually of the same model, whatever the fish they may seek—­except