even a hundred herrings for one and sixpence? Who is there who would
sell a hundred herrings for ten and sixpence? Yet one gig alone this
morning has brought in fourteen thousand herrings. No wonder that
there is an atmosphere of excitement in the harbour. No wonder that
the carts almost run over you as they make journey after journey
between boat and barrel. No wonder that three different sorts of
sea-gulls--the herring gull, the lesser black-headed gull, and the
black-backed gull--have gathered about us in screaming multitudes and
fill the air like a snowstorm. Every child in the town seems to be
making for home with its finger in a fish's mouth, or in two fishes'
mouths, or in three fishes' mouths. Artists have hurried down to the
harbour, and have set up their easels on every spot that is not
already occupied by a fish barrel or an auctioneer or a man with a
knife in his teeth preparing to gut a dogfish. The town has lost its
head. It has become Midas for the day. Every time it opens its mouth a
herring comes out. A doom of herrings has come upon us. The smell
rises to heaven. It is as though we were breathing fish-scales. Even
the pretty blue overalls of the children have become spotted.
Everywhere barrels and boxes have been piled high. We are hoisting
them on to carts--farm carts, grocers' carts, coal carts, any sort of
carts. We must get rid of the stuff at all costs. Anything to get it
up the hill to the railway station. The very horses are frenzied. They
stick their toes into the hill and groan. The drivers, excited with
cupidity as they think of all the journeys they will be able to make
before evening, bully them and beat them with the end of the reins.
Their eyes are excited, their gestures impatient. They fill the town
with clamour and smell. It is an occasion on which, as the vulgar say,
they wouldn't call the Queen their aunt....

This, I fancy, is where all the romance of the sea began--in the story