VI
TRAWLING FOR HAKE
"Turn out, Whittington! All aboard for the fishing-grounds!"
Spurling's voice, reinforcing the last echoes of the alarm-clock, dispelled Percy's inclination to roll over for another nap. Jim's strong tones carried a suggestion of authority which the younger lad was half minded to resent. He swallowed his pride, however, rolled out, and dressed. It was only a half-hour after midnight when he sat down with Jim to a breakfast of warmed-over beans, corn-bread, and coffee, prepared by Filippo. Budge and Throppy were sleeping soundly. They would not get up until three hours later. Percy envied them, but he ate a good meal.
"Now," directed Jim, "pull on those rubber boots and get into your oil-clothes. You'll see before long why they're useful. Trawling's a cold, wet, dirty business, and you want to be well prepared for it. And don't forget those nippers! They'll protect your hands from the chafe of the line."
Taking buoys, anchors, and other gear from the fish-house, they got into the dory and rowed out to the Barracouta. The six tubs of trawl, baited two afternoons before, were already on board. They stowed everything in its place, then headed out of the cove, towing the dory.
It was a clear, cool night. A light wind was blowing from the north, but the sea was fairly smooth.
"Guess we'll run down to Clay Bank," said Spurling. "It's only six miles to the southward. We ought to get a good set there."
Steadily they plowed on. It was Percy's first experience in a small boat on the midnight ocean, and he felt something akin to awe as they breasted the long swells, heaving in slowly and gently, yet resistlessly. Down to the horizon all around arched the deep blue firmament, spangled with stars. Matinicus Rock glittered in the west, while just beyond the shoulder of Brimstone Point, Saddleback Light, almost level with the sea, kept vanishing and reappearing.
As the Barracouta forged forward her prow started two diverging lines of phosphorescent bubbles and her wake resembled a trail of boiling flame. Percy called Jim's attention to the display.
"Yes," remarked the latter, "the water's firing in good shape to-night."
There was a sudden splash to starboard. A gleaming body several feet long rolled up above the surface; a grunting sigh broke the silence; and the apparition disappeared.
"What's that?" demanded the startled Percy.
"Porpoise! 'Puffing pig.'"
For over an hour Jim held the sloop to an exact course by means of his compass. At half past two he stopped the engine.
"We're here, fast enough!" assented Percy, staring about. "But where's here? Doesn't look any different to me from anywhere else."
"Clay Bank."
With his sounding-lead Jim tried the depth of the water.
"Thought so! Fifty fathoms!"
He prepared at once to set the trawl. Dropping the outer jib and mainsail, he jogged slowly before the wind under the jumbo, or inner jib.
"Now let her go!"
Over splashed the buoy, an empty pickle-keg, painted red, and drifted astern. Next, down went the light anchor. As soon as it reached bottom Jim lifted the first tub of trawl to the wash-board. Then with the heaving-stick, eighteen inches long and whittled to a point, he began to flirt overboard the coils lying in the tub.
Percy, holding the lantern, watched the steady stream of gangings and herring-baited hooks follow one another over the side and sink astern. In a surprisingly short time the tub was empty, and the five hundred fathoms of trawl, with more than a hook to a fathom, lay in a long, straight line on the muddy bottom, three hundred feet below.
A second tub trailed after the first, its trawl being attached to the end of the other. The four remaining tubs followed in order. At the junction of the second and third a buoy was fastened, and another between the fourth and fifth. To the end of the trawl from the sixth and last tub was tied another anchor, and as soon as it had reached bottom the last buoy was cast over. They had set almost three and a half miles of trawl, bearing more than thirty-one hundred short, baited lines.
"And there's a good job done!" exclaimed Jim, as the last buoy floated astern. "Here's to a ten-pound hake on every hook!"
"Do you often catch as many as that?" inquired Percy, innocently.
Jim laughed.
"Hardly! We'll be more than lucky if we get a tenth of that number."
Day was now breaking. The night wind had died out and, save for the long, oily swells, the sea was absolutely calm. Jim started the engine and swung the Barracouta round, and they ran leisurely back to the other end of the trawl, meanwhile eating the lunch Filippo had put up for them. Soon they were close to the first red buoy.
"Now for business!" said Jim.
He stepped into the dory.
"Guess you know enough about automobiles, Whittington, to handle this engine. Keep the sloop close by and watch me haul. You can take your turn when I get tired."
Gaffing the buoy aboard, he pulled up the anchor, and soon was hauling in the trawl over the wooden roller on the starboard bow. Percy watched with all his eyes. This was real fishing.
As the line came in Jim coiled it smoothly down into an empty tub on a stand in the bow. The first three hooks were skinned clean.
"Something down there, at any rate," he commented.
The trawl sagged heavily.
"First fish, and a good-sized one! Pretty logy, though! Feels like a hake!"
Percy stared down into the blackish-green water. Out of its gloomy depths rose an indistinct shadow, gradually assuming definite shape. A blunt, lumpy head with big, staring eyes broke the surface; two long streamers hung from beneath the lower jaw.
Jim reached for his gaff.
"Hake! And a good one, too!"
Striking the sharp iron hook through the fish's gills, he lifted the slimy gray body over the gunwale, unhooked it, and slung it, floundering, over the kid-board into the empty space amidships.
"Fifteen-pounder! Wish we could get a hundred more like him! Hullo! Who's next?"
The newcomer had a huge reddish-brown head with bulging cheeks; his blotched body, adorned with wicked spines, tapered slimly off to an inconspicuous tail.
"Horn-pout! Toad sculpin! Bah! Get out!"
Jim slat the fish disgustedly off, and he sculled slowly downward. Two more bare hooks. Then three hake in succession, the largest not over five pounds. On the next line hung a writhing, twisting shape about eighteen inches long. With a wry face Jim held the thing up for Percy's inspection.
"Slime eel! He's tied the ganging into knots and thrown off his jacket. Look here!"
He stripped from the line a handful of tough, stringy slime like a mass of soft soap.
"How's that for an overcoat! They always throw it off when they get hung up on a trawl."
Flinging the stuff away with a grimace, he rinsed his hand and cut off the ganging with his knife.
"No use trying to unhook that fellow!"
Fathom after fathom of trawl came in over the roller. The flapping, dying heap in the center of the dory enlarged steadily. Jim was spattered with scales from head to foot, and drenched with water from the splashing tails. He stopped for a moment to rest.
"Now you see what oil-clothes are good for," said he. "I'll give you your chance in a little while."
Percy had kept the Barracouta near by as Jim pulled the dory along the trawl. He could watch the process very well from the sloop, and he was by no means anxious for a personal experience with it. It looked too much like hard work. He made no reply to Jim's offer.
Refreshed by his rest, the latter resumed hauling. Up came a little cluster of yellow plums, as large as small walnuts, each on a stem six inches long, attached to a brownish bunch of roots.
"Nigger-heads! Always grow on rocky bottom; nicest kind of place for fish. Trawl must have run over a patch of ledge. We're likely to pick up something here besides hake. What's this?"
A heavy fish appeared, hanging motionless on the next ganging. Jim gave a shout.
"Haddock! Twelve-pounder. Swallowed the hook and worried himself to death. Drowned!"
"Drown a fish!" jeered Percy.
"Sure you can, any kind of fish, if you only keep his mouth open. If this fellow hadn't taken the bait in so deep he'd have been liable to break away. Fishermen call 'em 'butter-mouths,' their flesh is so tender; under jaw's the only place where a hook will hold to lift 'em by. See his red lips, and that black streak down each side. And look at these two black spots, big as silver dollars, on his shoulders; that's where they say the devil got him between his thumb and forefinger, but couldn't hold on."
It was now not far from four o'clock. The sun, rising straight from the water, lifted his fiery red disk above the eastern horizon. It was a strange sight to Percy. The sunrises he had seen could almost be numbered on the fingers of one hand. He yawned. The novelty of trawling was wearing off; he wished himself back in his hard bunk.
A heavy, chunky fish of an old-gold color, with an almost continuous line of fins, was the next habitant of the sea to cross the dory gunwale. Jim held him up to show Percy.
"Look at this cusk! He likes rocky bottom as well as a haddock. He's used to deep water, and if you start him up quick his stomach will blow out of his mouth like a bladder. I've seen 'em so plenty that they floated a trawl on top of water for half a mile."
Seven or eight small haddock and cusk, and then once more the trawl began to yield hake.
"Back again on muddy bottom," said Jim. "What d'you say to trying your hand at it?"
Percy agreed, but without enthusiasm. He had seen enough to realize that pulling a trawl was no sinecure. By means of a fish-fork Jim pitched his catch aboard the sloop. The first tub of trawl was now full. He transferred it to the Barracouta and set an empty tub in its place.
"You'll find fishing is no bed of roses," he remarked as he dropped down into the standing-room.
"I believe you," answered Percy, with conviction.
He started to get aboard the dory.
"Not there!" warned Jim. "Forward of the kid-board!"
The caution came too late. Percy stepped into the slippery pen from which the fish had just been pitched; unluckily, too, he was not careful to plant his weight amidships. The dory, overbalanced to starboard, careened suddenly, and he fell sprawling on the slimy bottom. Jim could not repress an exclamation of impatience.
"Why didn't you step where I told you?"
"I didn't think she'd tip so easy," retorted Percy, angrily.
In bad humor with himself and things in general, he scrambled up and took his place back of the empty tub. Jim sheered the Barracouta off.
"Put on your nippers! If you don't your hands will be raw in a little while."
Percy thrust his fingers through the white woolen doughnuts, grasped the trawl, and began dragging it in over the roller. He made slow, awkward work of it. Jim watched him with ill-suppressed impatience, keeping up a constant stream of necessary counsel.
"Careful! Don't jerk so, or you'll catch your hooks in the gunwale. There's a good-sized one! Don't try to lift him aboard without the gaff. Press your hook down and back! Don't yank it sideways like that; you'll only hook him harder. Coil that line away more evenly, or we'll have a bad mess when we come to bait up. Don't lose that fellow! There he goes! Be more careful of the next one!"
Needful though it was, this quickfire of advice rasped on Percy's temper. The unaccustomed work tired him badly. He was soon conscious of a pain in his shoulders and across the back of his neck; his wrists ached. Every now and then the hard, wiry line slipped off the nippers and sawed across his smarting fingers or palms. But pride kept him doggedly pulling.
A dozen hake of various sizes lay behind him in the pen when a flat, kite-shaped fish, four feet long, with a caricature of a human face beneath its head, came scaling up through the water.
"What's that?" he gasped in amazement.
"Skate!"
"Shall I keep him?"
"Keep him? No! Unless you want to eat him yourself."
Bunglingly Percy tried to dismiss his unwelcome catch, but he made slow work of extricating the deeply swallowed hook. Jim had stopped the Barracouta a few feet off. With the agony that an expert feels at the unskilful butchery of a task by an amateur, he watched his mate's awkward attempts. At last he could stand it no longer.
"Come aboard the sloop, Whittington," he ordered. "I'll finish pulling the trawl."
Percy obeyed sullenly. He had almost reached his limit of physical endurance, and he was only too glad of relief for his smarting skin and aching muscles. Fishing was a miserable business, and he wanted no part of it; on that he was fully decided. But even if a job is unpleasant, a man would rather resign than be discharged. Jim's abruptness hurt his pride; the slight rankled.
From the Barracouta he somewhat enviously watched Spurling deftly unhook the skate. The remainder of the trawl was pulled in in silence. Percy kept the sloop at a distance that discouraged speech, closing the gap only when Jim signaled that he wished to discharge his cargo. By ten o'clock the last hook was reached, anchor and buoy taken aboard, and the Barracouta, with two thousand pounds of fish heaped in her kids and towing astern in the dory, headed for Tarpaulin Island.
The trip home was a glum one. Two or three times Jim tried to open a conversation, but Percy responded only in monosyllables. He was tired and sleepy, and felt generally out-of-sorts. So Jim gave it up and let him alone.
They reached Sprowl's Cove at noon. Budge and Throppy had returned some time before from pulling the lobster-traps; Jim inspected their catch.
"About forty pounds," was his estimate. "Rather slim; but then the traps were down only about twelve hours. We'll do better after we get fairly started. I'm not going trawling to-morrow; so the whole crowd can make a lobstering trip in the Barracouta. Now let's have dinner. This afternoon we'll all turn to and dress fish."
Percy filed a mental negative to the last statement. He had decided that, so far at least as Tarpaulin Island was concerned, his fishing days were over. Nevertheless, he ate a good dinner.
At one o'clock the four academy boys rowed out to the Barracouta. All but Percy had on their oilskin aprons, or "petticoats."
"Where's your regimentals, Whittington?" asked Lane.
"I'm only going to look on this afternoon," replied Percy.
The other three exchanged surprised glances, but made no comments. On board the sloop Jim was soon busily engaged in demonstrating the process of dressing fish. Budge and Throppy learned quickly. Percy's refusal to take part in the work did not prevent him from watching it with interest from the cabin roof.
The fish were split and cleaned. Their heads were cut off and thrown into a barrel, to serve later as lobster bait, and the livers tossed into pails. Their "sounds," the membrane running along the backbone, were removed and placed in a box. After the bodies had been rinsed in a tub of water, and the backbones cut out, they were flung into the dory, taken ashore and plunged into another tub of water, and then salted down in hogsheads. Three pairs of hands made speedy work.
"What do you do with those?"
Percy pointed to the pails containing the livers.
"Leave 'em in a barrel in the sun to be tried out," responded Jim. "The oil is worth more than sixty cents a gallon."
"And those?"
He indicated the box of "sounds."
"Cut 'em open with a pair of shears, press out the blood, and spread 'em on wire netting to dry for three days; then sew 'em up in sacks, to be shipped to some glue-factory. Four pounds of 'em'll bring a dollar. These things and some others are the by-products of the fishing business. They're worth too much to throw away."
Percy's eye dwelt on the knives and aprons of his three associates.
"I'm glad I don't have to fish for a living," he said.