IN THE EXCITEMENT OF THE FIRST CATCH
There is a swirl of the line as the lead goes all the way over, a splash forward, and, as the skipper luffs her up into it, the line comes upright, and gets a depth of thirty fathoms. As she comes up into the wind, the noisy jib flaps down with a run, and the anchor drops to the sandy bottom. Now the buckets of bait are tossed up from below, and the skipper leaves his helm to take to the lines. Over the sides and stern they go, dragging down to leeward.
There is quiet for a moment, and then a line runs out. There is a tug as the strong arm checks it and hauls it in quickly, hand over hand. There is a gleam of light, a swish at the surface, and the fish flies over the rail, flopping helplessly on to the deck, the first catch of the season,—a big one.
Another tug, and another, and soon the work is fast and furious. It takes honest elbow-muscle, too, to haul ten pounds of floundering cod up five feet of freeboard to the rail and deck. Soon the deck is covered with the long, slim, gleaming bodies, and the boys of the schooner have man’s work in tossing them into the gurry-pen amidships. Before the pen is filled, the fishes stop biting as suddenly as they struck on, and there is a rest for a while to bait-up and clean down.
If the signs hold good, the skipper will order the men out to set trawls, for the smell of the dead fish sometimes drives the school away.