in and about the port were alive with mackerel—­the finest, plumpest, fattest, and most willing fish ever seen in any waters.  They sported round us, looking clever enough to make all on board the schooner believe they wanted to come on board.  The crew felt like scraping acquaintance with them, favoring them with a hook, and the like; but then there interposed that great bugbear—­the treaty line.  Hard was it to tell where this line was; it might, for aught to the contrary, be on the top of a wave, upon which we might be tossed, much against Smooth’s inclination, far into the unlawful side.  Being, however, inside of the line and surrounded by mackerel, one would have supposed the Nova Scotians had been on the alert catching them.  The case was just the reverse, for not a Nova Scotiaman was to be seen.  To Smooth’s mind this was making a law to protect the lazy, something he never approved of, more especially in these days of energy and railroads.  A determination was come to, after mature deliberation, that fish there were and fish our boys must have, so you must lend an ear while Smooth relates the manner in which he got them.  Deacon Hawkins kept an inn for the entertainment of man and beast.  It was not the very best kind of an inn, for it was managed by the deacon’s wife, whose parsimony and love of Friday evening meetings had lost her nearly all her guests and driven her children barefoot into the street.  On the day following the Starlight’s arrival, as luck would have it, a ‘political meeting’ was to be holden at the Deacon’s, when a considerable amount of first-rate drinking was sure to come off.  Smooth, being Mr. Pierce’s minister in general, was honored with an invitation which he declined in consideration of his anxiety to be among the mackerel.  Something must indeed be done for the mackerel; the case was a serious one.  Had the Britishers shown a resolution to be among the fish, Smooth had lent them a hand to secure the whole shoal, and then brought them back, merely to avoid the penalty of the British law, and secure the bounty given by ours.  Well, the Britishers were all gone to a political meeting, where a noisy politician of the name of Joe Howe, and another of the name of Doyle, having come all the way from Halifax, and brought with them other great men of the political world of Nova Scotia, would relieve themselves of ponderous speeches, to hear which all the old men of the parish would take their promising sons.  Smooth never regarded political meetings over highly, and had more than once thought those so earnest in attending them had done much better attending their potato fields.  With this opinion made stronger in the present instance, he counselled Mister Splitwater, the mate, whose logic never was known to be at fault.  Splitwater, agreed that it was expedient to be in pursuit of the fish while the Britishers were attending their political gatherings and prayer-meetings.  Mackerel were right knowing fish, he said, and could with good feed be coaxed