five in the morning
With a four-oared skiff manning each end of the nine hundred-foot length they swept their net around the Jew 's Mouth , closed it like a purse seine , and hauled it out into the shallows of a small beach . They stood in the shallow water with sea boots on and forked the salmon into their rowboats and laid the rowboats alongside the _ Blackbird _ to deliver , -- all in the dark without a lantern flicker , with muffled oarlocks and hushed voices . Three times they swept the bay . At five in the morning , before it was lightening in the east , the _ Blackbird _ rode four inches below her load water line with a mixed cargo of coho and dog salmon , the heaviest cargo ever stowed under her hatches , -- and eight fishermen divided two thousand dollars share and share alike for their night 's work . MacRae battened his hatch covers , started his engine , heaved up the hook , and hauled out of the bay . In the Gulf the obscuring clouds parted to lay a shaft of silver on smooth , windless sea . The _ Blackbird _ wallowed down the moon-trail .