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Page 21
"Don't tech 'em. Slat 'em off. Don't--"
The warning came too late. Harvey had picked them from the
hook, and was admiring them.
"Ouch!" he cried, for his fingers throbbed as though he had
grasped many nettles.
"Now ye know what strawberry-bottom means. Nothin' 'cep' fish
should be teched with the naked fingers, Dad says. Slat 'em off
agin the guunel, an' bait up, Harve. Lookin' won't help any. It's all
in the wages."
Harvey smiled at the thought of his ten and a half dollars a month,
and wondered what his mother would say if she could see him
hanging over the edge of a fishing-dory in mid-ocean. She suffered
agonies whenever he went out on Saranac Lake; and, by the way,
Harvey remembered distinctly that he used to laugh at her
anxieties. Suddenly the line flashed through his hand, stinging
even through the "nippers," the woolen circlets supposed to protect
it.
"He's a logy. Give him room accordin' to his strength," cried Dan.
"I'll help ye."
"No, you won't," Harvey snapped, as he hung on to the line. "It's
my first fish. I--is it a whale?"
"Halibut, mebbe." Dan peered down into the water alongside, and
flourished the big "muckle," ready for all chances. Something
white and oval flickered and fluttered through the green. "I'll lay
my wage an' share he's over a hundred. Are you so everlastin'
anxious to land him alone?"
Harvey's knuckles were raw and bleeding where they had been
hanged against the gunwale; his face was purple-blue between
excitement and exertion; he dripped with sweat, and was
half-blinded from staring at the circling sunlit ripples about the
swiftly moving line. The boys were tired long ere the halibut, who
took charge of them and the dory for the next twenty minutes. But
the big flat fish was gaffed and hauled in at last.
"Beginner's luck," said Dan, wiping his forehead. "He's all of a
hundred."
Harvey looked at the huge gray-and-mottled creature with
unspeakable pride. He had seen halibut many times on marble
slabs ashore, but it had never occurred to him to ask how they
came inland. Now he knew; and every inch of his body ached with
fatigue.
"Ef Dad was along," said Dan, hauling up, "he'd read the signs
plain's print. The fish are runnin' smaller an' smaller, an' you've
took 'baout as logy a halibut's we're apt to find this trip. Yesterday's
catch--did ye notice it?--was all big fish an' no halibut. Dad he'd read
them signs right off. Dad says everythin' on the Banks is signs, an'
can be read wrong er right. Dad's deeper'n the Whale-hole."
Even as he spoke some one fired a pistol on the 'We're Here', and a
potato-basket was run up in the fore-rigging.
"What did I say, naow? That's the call fer the whole crowd. Dad's
onter something, er he'd never break fishin' this time o' day. Reel
up, Harve, an' we'll pull back."
They were to windward of the schooner, just ready to flirt the dory
over the still sea, when sounds of woe half a mile off led them to
Penn, who was careering around a fixed point for all the world like
a gigantic water-bug. The little man backed away and came down
again with enormous energy, but at the end of each maneuver his
dory swung round and snubbed herself on her rope.
"We'll hev to help him, else he'll root an' seed here," said Dan.
"What's the matter?" said Harvey. This was a new world, where he
could not lay down the law to his elders, but had to ask questions
humbly. And the sea was horribly big and unexcited.
"Anchor's fouled. Penn's always losing 'em. Lost two this trip
a'ready--on sandy bottom too--an' Dad says next one he loses, sure's
fishin', he'll give him the kelleg. That 'u'd break Penn's heart."
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