[Illustration:  STRIKES A SCHOONER AND SHEARS THROUGH HER LIKE A KNIFE]

Ordinarily there is but short shrift for the helpless folks on a fishing vessel when struck by a liner.  The keen prow cuts right through planking and stout oak frame, and the dissevered portions of the hull are tossed to starboard and to port, to sink before the white foam has faded from the wake of the destroying monster.  They tell ghoulish tales of bodies sliced in twain as neatly as the boat itself; of men asleep in their bunks being decapitated, or waking, to find themselves struggling in the water with an arm or leg shorn off.  And again, there are stories of escapes that were almost miraculous; of men thrown by the shock of collision out of the foretop of the schooner onto the deck of the steamship, and carried abroad in safety, while their partners mourned them as dead; of men, dozing in their bunks, startled suddenly by the grinding crash of steel and timbers, and left gazing wide-eyed at the gray sea lapping the side of their berths, where an instant before the tough oak skin of the schooner had been; of men stunned by some flying bit of wood, who, all unconscious, floated on the top of the hungry waves, until as by Divine direction, their inert bodies touched the side of a vagrant dory and were dragged aboard to life again.  The Banks can perform their miracles of humanity as well as of cruelty.

Few forms of manual work are more exacting, involve more physical suffering and actual peril to life, than fishing with trawls.  Under the happiest circumstances, with the sky clear, the sea moderately calm, and the air warm, it is arduous, muscle-trying, nerve-racking work.  Pulling up half a mile of line, with hooks catching on the bottom, big fish floundering and fighting for freedom, and the dory dancing on the waves like mad, is no easy task.  The line cuts the fingers, and the long, hard pull wearies the wrists until they ache, as though with inflammatory rheumatism.  But when all this had to be done in a wet, chilling fog, or in a nipping winter’s wind that freezes the spray in beard and hair, while the frost bites the fingers that the line lacerates, then the fisherman’s lot is a bitter one.

The method of setting and hauling the trawls has been well described by Mr. John Z. Rogers, in “Outing,” and some extracts from his story will be of interest to readers: 

“The trawls were of cod-line, and tied to them at distances of six feet were smaller lines three feet in length, with a hook attached to the end.  Each dory had six trawls, each one eighteen hundred feet long.  The trawls were neatly coiled in tubs made by sawing flour barrels in two, and as fast as they were baited with pieces of herring they were carefully coiled into another tub, that they might run out quickly without snarling when being set.

“The last trawl was finished just before supper, at five o’clock.  After supper the men enjoyed a Half-hour smoke, then preparations