And where the tide ebbs and flows,
the Chinese sink great bag-nets to the bottom, with gaping mouths,
into which the shrimp crawls and from which it is transferred to
the boiling-pot. This in itself would not be bad, were it not for
the small mesh of the nets, so small that the tiniest fishes,
little new-hatched things not a quarter of an inch long, cannot
pass through. The beautiful beaches of Points Pedro and Pablo,
where are the shrimp-catchers' villages, are made fearful by the
stench from myriads of decaying fish, and against this wasteful
destruction it has ever been the duty of the fish patrol to act.
When I was a youngster of sixteen, a good sloop-sailor and all-
round bay-waterman, my sloop, the Reindeer, was chartered by the
Fish Commission, and I became for the time being a deputy
patrolman. After a deal of work among the Greek fishermen of the
Upper Bay and rivers, where knives flashed at the beginning of
trouble and men permitted themselves to be made prisoners only
after a revolver was thrust in their faces, we hailed with delight
an expedition to the Lower Bay against the Chinese shrimp-catchers.
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